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Donald Trump Continues the Manipulation of Populism by 'Swamping Up' His
Path to Power
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/trump_manipulation_of_populism_by_swampi
ng_up_path_to_power_20161208/
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Posted on Dec 8, 2016
By Paul Street
Donald Trump's brash brand of populism resonated with voters during the
election, but he is not delivering on many of his campaign promises as
president-elect. (Jim Cole / AP
(http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/GOP-2016-Establishment-Woes/642e492b
5f734b7c875c01fadcae9fe2/6/0/) )
White middle- and working-class "heartland" voters helped Donald Trump
defeat Hillary Clinton in November. Now, Trump already seems to be betraying
them.
Thinking about this reality, I am struck by the living historical relevance
of Christopher Hitchens' description
(http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43371.No_One_Left_to_Lie_to) of "the
essence of American politics, when distilled," as "the manipulation of
populism by elitism. That elite is most successful which can claim the
heartiest allegiance of the fickle crowd; can present itself as most 'in
touch' with popular concerns; can anticipate the tides and pulses of public
opinion. ." Hitchens wrote those words 16 years ago.
We might speak of that essence also as the manipulation of identity politics
by elitism. Speaking to the Real News Network in 2013, Truthdig columnist
Chris Hedges reflected on how U.S. major party electoral politics is an
elite-run sport
(http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Item
id=74&jumival=12796) in which a corporate-managed electorate is
identity-played by a moneyed elite that pulls the strings behind the scenes
(http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9175.html) :
Both sides of the political spectrum are manipulated by the same forces. If
you're some right-wing Christian zealot in Georgia, then it's homosexuals
and abortion and all these, you know, wedge issues that are used to whip you
up emotionally. If you are a liberal in Manhattan, it's-you know, 'They'll
be teaching creationism in your schools' or whatever. . Yet in fact it's
just a game, because whether it's Bush or whether it's Obama, Goldman Sachs
always wins. There is no way to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs.
A 'Broken System'
The Trump presidency-in-formation is shaping up like something straight out
of Hitchens' and Hedges' formulations. Candidate Trump charged hedge fund
managers with "getting away with murder
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/30/trump-said-hedge-fun
ders-were-getting-away-with-murder-now-he-wants-one-to-help-run-the-economy/
?utm_term=.e8c3eba9f27f) " by taking advantage of tax-code loopholes. He
inveighed against a "financial elite" that bribes politicians in a "rigged"
and "broken" system
(http://www.npr.org/2016/06/28/483883321/fact-check-trumps-speech-on-the-eco
nomy-annotated) that leaves "millions of our workers with nothing but
poverty and heartache."
In a political advertisement (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vST61W4bGm8)
he ran just days before the presidential election, Trump denounced "a global
power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have
robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth, and put that
money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations." As Trump's
"populist" verbiage boomed in the background, the commercial flashed images
of the New York Stock Exchange, hedge fund billionaire George Soros and
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. It was consistent with a recurrent theme
across Trump's campaign: a pledge to redeem "forgotten" working-class and
blue-collar "Americans" from the nefarious global corporations and financial
firms that sold them down the river in the name of free trade. As part of
that pledge, Trump promised to "drain the swamp in Washington" of "special
interests," including Wall Street elites.
Wall Street seemed to return the enmity. The Center for Responsive Politics
reports that the security and investment industry donated more than $78
million
(http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2016/11/03/How-Much-Does-Wall-Street-Love-Hil
lary-Let-s-Count-78-Million-Ways) to Hillary Clinton's campaign and super
PAC. This was more than 100 times what the industry gave to Trump. Adding
insult to injury, Blankfein said last year
(http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/16/news/economy/goldman-ceo-blankfein-donald-t
rump/) that the notion of Trump "with his finger on the button blows my
mind."
Different Identity Spins
Of course, the Republicans don't manipulate populism in quite the same way
as the Democrats. While the Democrats don the outwardly liberal and diverse,
many-colored cloak of Hollywood- and Upper West Side-approved bicoastal
multiculturalism, the GOP connects its manipulation to ugly (Hillary called
it "deplorable") white "heartland" nationalism, sexism, hyper-masculinism,
nativism, evangelism and racism. The rightmost major party shades over into
a kind of Amerikanner-like neofascism. Donald "Make America Great [Hate]
Again" Trump played that nasty card to a chilling degree, sparking more "It
Can Happen Here" (fascism, that is) fear than any U.S. political phenomenon
in recent memory.
But in both versions, that of the Democrats and that of the Republicans,
Goldman Sachs (and Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, et al.) always prevails. The
bankrollers and bankers atop the Deep State
(https://www.amazon.com/Deep-State-Constitution-Shadow-Government/dp/0143109
936) continue to reign. The nation's unelected dictatorship of money
continues to call the shots. That was certainly true under the
arch-neoliberal Barack Obama
(https://www.amazon.com/Empires-New-Clothes-Barack-Obama/dp/1594518459/ref=s
r_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481040807&sr=1-4&keywords=the+empire%27s+new+clot
hes) , whose relentless service to the nation's economic ruling class has
been amply documented by numerous journalists, authors (the present writer
included
(http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/19/progressive-obama-hes-melting-hes-me
lting/) ) and academics.
'Wall Street and Trump Make Up Quickly'
The usual betrayal of "populist" campaign words with elite corporate and
financial personnel deeds (and Washington has long understood that
"personnel is policy") is already underway with Trump. There's no serious
attempt to hide it. A recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report is titled
"Wall Street and Trump Make Up Quickly
(http://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-and-wall-street-make-up-quickly-14
80465473) ." It notes: "After largely opposing his 2016 presidential
campaign, financial service executives are making fast friends with
President-elect Trump. . Wall Street could wind up being a big winner under
Mr. Trump, despite his broadsides against big banks during the campaign."
You don't say.
Another Wall Street Journal news item one day later was titled "Trump's
Wealthy Appointments Contrast With Populist Campaign Tone
(http://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-wealthy-appointments-contrast-with-popul
ist-campaign-tone-1480626264) ." In this and in other reports from across
top media outlets like The New York Times
(http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/30/business/dealbook/trumps-economic-cabinet
-picks-signal-embrace-of-wall-st-elite.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=1) and The
Washington Post
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/trump-nominees-map-out-plan
s-for-tax-cuts-trade-and-carrier-style-negotiations/2016/11/30/54cfca98-b73d
-11e6-a677-b608fbb3aaf6_story.html?utm_term=.e5b6df37c5dc) , one learns that
Trump has selected two leading and filthy rich Wall Street investors-Steven
Mnuchin and Wilbur Ross-for top economic policy positions in his Cabinet.
With the mega-billionaire Trump (slated to be the richest president in
American history) at its apex, the Trump White House is shaping up to be the
greatest monument to uber-plutocracy since the super-pinstriped presidencies
of Warren Harding and Calvin ("The Chief Business of the American People Is
Business
(http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2010/01/business-of-america-is-business.html
) ") Coolidge. As WSJ's Rebecca Ballhaus reports:
President-elect Donald Trump, who ran a populist campaign . is assembling
one of the wealthiest administration teams in recent memory. . In the past
few weeks, Mr. Trump has appointed three fellow billionaires to top
administration positions, and at least two other millionaires to his
cabinet. . On Wednesday, he confirmed that he had tapped Wilbur Ross, the
chairman of a private-equity firm, to serve as commerce secretary. Mr. Ross
has a net worth estimated at about $2.5 billion. . Steven Mnuchin, a former
Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. banker whose net worth is in the hundreds of
millions, was chosen as Treasury secretary, and Betsy DeVos, a Michigan
philanthropist whose family has a net worth of about $5.1 billion, was
picked to head the Education Department. . All told, Mr. Trump's choices for
four cabinet positions-Treasury, Commerce, Education and Transportation-have
a combined net worth of at least $8.1 billion.
"The concentration of wealth in Mr. Trump's Cabinet," Ballhaus notes,
"contrasts with his rhetoric on the campaign trail, where he struck a
populist tone."
Gee, who would have ever guessed? The false pretense of surprise is quite
transparent in these news reports.
Good as Goldman
Last week, Trump met with Goldman Sachs President and Chief Operating
Officer Gary Cohn to discuss Cabinet appointments. Mnuchin's appointment
continues an old Washington tradition: putting a person with an elite
history at Goldman Sachs in a top economic post. Bill Clinton did it with
Robert E. Rubin in 1995, and George W. Bush did it with Hank Paulson in
2006. Obama's top economic team
(http://billmoyers.com/story/takes-ruling-class-village-staff-white-house/)
was riddled with Goldman Sachs and Citigroup veterans and operatives.
Mnuchin has a strong Goldman pedigree. His father was an early Goldman Sachs
partner who pioneered stock trading over more than three decades at the
firm. But it's not just about Goldman. "Mnuchin," former Morgan Stanley
executive Gary Kaminsky told the Times, "is somebody who can speak to
bankers" at other firms too: [JPMorgan Chase CEO] Jamie Dimon, Lloyd
Blankfein, [Morgan Stanley CEO] James Gorman and [Bank of America CEO] Brian
Moynihan. He can speak their language. . He comes from a trading desk, and
that's something that is very strong."
So what if these are the same "masters of the universe" who pushed the
global economy over the cliff (at epic taxpayer expense) eight years ago?
Who cares if they've been trailblazing a New Gilded Age inequality
(http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2015/sep/21/bernie-s/bernie-s
anders-says-top-01-us-have-almost-much-wea/) so stark that the top tenth of
the nation's 1 percent owns nearly as much wealth as the nation's bottom 90
percent.
Swamping Up: A Cabinet of Vultures
Trump's spokesman Jason Miller calls the president-elect's appointees a
"Cabinet of winners." It might be better to see them as a Cabinet of
vultures. The multi-millionaire Mnuchin (Treasury), 53, is a longtime hedge
fund manager, and the billionaire Ross (Commerce), 79, is a former leveraged
buyout and corporate "turnaround" specialist. Both have feathered their
uber-opulent nests by buying distressed properties and selling them for a
profit-turning others' losses into their personal gains.
Mnuchin co-founded a bank (OneWest) that foreclosed on thousands of
homeowners during the 2008 financial crisis. He made millions after that
parasitic action. At one point, his bank foreclosed on a 90-year-old woman
after she made a 27-cent payment error
(http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-treasury-foreclosed-homes-mnuch
in-232038) .
If there's anything distinctive about Trump's appointments so far, it is the
extremism of their wealth. Trump's picks for four Cabinet
positions-Treasury, Commerce, Education and Transportation-have a combined
net worth (at least $8.1 billion) that is more than four times the net worth
of President Barack Obama's appointees for those posts in 2013 and nearly 20
times the worth of President George W. Bush's picks at the beginning of his
second term.
"Mr. Trump," Ballhaus notes, "has often said that he admires those who, like
him, have succeeded in the business world, and that he wants to attract
people who can transfer those skills into government." Trump, it appears,
agrees with U.S. founder John Jay, who said that the people who own the
country ought to run the country.
Trump clearly isn't interested just in merely successful business class
appointees. He wants Cabinet members from the super-wealthy-people with the
"winner" genes and character he identifies with his own perceived personal
superiority and "greatness." (Personal enrichment has been Trump's only true
personal religion ever since his silver-spooned childhood and his youthful
indoctrination
(http://www.npr.org/2016/08/03/488477378/for-donald-trump-mike-pence-brings-
conservative-christian-cred) by Marble Collegiate Church pastor Norman
Vincent Peale, who emphasized "self over faith" and preached "positive
thinking" without self-criticism.)
Trump seems to want direct rule by the wealthiest among the wealthy few,
without managerial intermediaries like Lawrence Summers and Timothy
Geithner.
This isn't draining the swamp. It's finding some of the biggest Deep State
swamp creatures around and putting them in top positions. We might call it
"swamping up."
Looking Forward to an 'Asset-Friendly' Presidency
Wall Street is eagerly making up with Trump
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/12/07/ceos-turn-to-a-top-w
all-street-banker-jp-morgans-jamie-dimon-to-lead-outreach-to-trump-administr
ation/?utm_term=.f4bf067f16a8) . Top financial services trade groups like
the American Bankers Association are running to help Trump fill top
financial regulatory positions in the next White House. Financial Services
Roundtable is raising $4 million to help Trump "pay for the transition
process." After Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, Blankfein praised the victor
as "market friendly and asset friendly." So what if the Deplorable One
threatens to launch World War III with a Twitter fit at 3 a.m.?
The accommodation makes perfect sense. Janus-faced finance capital runs like
water to the powers that be at the end of the day. And the elite financial
sector is looking forward to significant regressive corporate and personal
tax cuts and financial deregulation with Republicans in charge of both the
White House and Congress in coming years. The stocks of Bank of America,
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have been on a great run ever since the
election.
'Trickle Down' Hopes
Do Trump and his fellow vultures worry that his appointments will antagonize
the "white working class" that helped vote him into office? Not likely. They
are counting on identity politics and nationalism, by global conflicts and
terror scares, to combine with the commercial media culture to keep the
"bewildered herd (https://chomsky.info/mediacontrol01/) "-the "rabble," the
"proles" in George Orwell's "1984," the restless many, and working-class
majority-clueless and confused.
It is unlikely that Trump and his team see any contradiction between their
super-wealthy appointments and their claims of concern for the American
working class. Their militantly capitalist world view tells them that
putting outlandishly wealthy business-class "winners" in charge of
government to slash financial, labor and environmental regulations will
unleash growth and thereby redound to the benefit of all in "trickle-down"
fashion. Sound familiar? Capitalist "free market" ideology is a powerful
thing, especially in the minds of those who have ridden it to obscene wealth
and power.
It isn't just the rich who buy into the ideology
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/many-trump-supporters-willing-to-le
t-him-pick-and-choose-what-promises-to-fulfill/2016/12/02/93a8530e-b8a3-11e6
-b994-f45a208f7a73_story.html?utm_term=.99cdfdde55e4) . "If he could be
someone who could really benefit his Cabinet and be better for America, I
say go for it," said Joe Terry, a 54-year-old maintenance worker and father
of five. Terry told The Washington Post that he has no problem with
Mnuchin's appointment to head Treasury. "Let's face it, he's going to look
out for corporations, to make things work for them, to bring jobs back
home," Terry said. "And as things trickle down-as they're going to because
it's America-the little guy will get something, too."
Reporting on a post-election rally Trump held in Cincinnati, Ohio, Post
reporter Jenna Johnson found that "many of Trump's [white middle- and
working-class supporters] said they completely trust their president-elect
to make the right decisions for the country, even if they don't understand
his motives."
Slandering Populism
Meanwhile, a different kind of "manipulation"-perhaps I should say
slander-"of populism" has been let loose in the reigning U.S. media-politics
culture. Populism, properly understood, is an egalitarian sentiment driven
by the citizenry's elementary understanding that (in the words of one-time
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis) "we must make our choice. We may have
democracy in this country, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands
of a few, but we cannot have both."
You wouldn't know this from the corporate media, which tends to treat
populism as right wing, racist, sexist, quasi-fascist, white nationalist and
nativist. The dominant media smears populism as ugly and authoritarian.
That's because the media is owned and run by people who fear and hate the
working-class majority and democracy.
Trump didn't really "run a populist campaign." The only major party
presidential contender who came close to actually doing that was Bernie
Sanders, who made opposition to the over-concentration of wealth and (hence)
power the centerpiece of his candidacy. The media made sure to cover his
more genuinely populist campaign (which attracted giant crowds across the
nation during the primary season) with far less fanfare and frequency than
it gave to every idiotic tweet and facial expression emanating from the
quasi-fascist Trump.
People who dream that Trump is going to make things better for "the white
working class" are in for a rude awakening. The masters of Goldman Sachs and
the rest of the financial super-elite
(http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/how_everyone_else_made_trumps_f
ortune_20120712) are slated to win again, as usual. You can take that to
the bank.
The only real mystery is how far Trump is going to go in honoring his darker
racist, sexist, nativist, white-nationalist and ecocidal pledges. And
whether "we the people" can form a real broad-based opposition and popular
resistance-one that can't simply be dismantled in service to a big "get out
the vote" campaign for Democratic candidates and their version of Hedges'
"game" and Hitchens' "essence of American politics."
Media, Morality and the Neighbor's Cow
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The EPA's New Boss, 'White Flight' in Higher Education and Bernie Sanders'
'Identity Politics'
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Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines
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