I think the reference to McCarthyism does make sense. For example, McCarthy did investigate the Army and Department of State on baseless accusations of foreign infiltration. This is what Trump is claiming is being done against him. However, in this situation, the accusations are not baseless, but based on clear evidence of potential illegal activity. Also, Trump is not being bullied by a demagogue, but is himself the demagogue in this situation.
Two things here: First, who should be doing the investigating of Presidents if not the "deep state"? If Congress wants to look into actions of the President, it needs an official apparatus to do so. Relying on journalists for this purpose is entirely illogical, as they have no authority to investigate or charge anyone with offenses. Second, Washington DC isn't a place with a singular power structure. Far from it, it is the epicenter of countless competing power structures from around the world. When someone gains the most powerful position in the city and then attempts to throw wrenches in every direction with wild abandon, he is absolutely going to get powerful entities opposing him. I don't think there is any argument that can be made about why this shouldn't be, as it is obviously going to be the case.
What I am speaking of isn't, or didn't begin as, although it is almost certainly from the beginning hoping to provoke, an "official apparatus" of Congress, it's member of the IC (I would assume the CIA and FBI) both going through journalists to manipulate Congress, or, if you want to see it this way, give Congress the opportunity to, go after the President; it is clearly an organized effort. I don't imagine the "deep state" of course as a single entity, nor is the U.S. government, or even any given agency, or even "the White House," or any two men in a room for that matter, they are all a bunch of moving and sometimes conflicting parts. Some of Trump's issues involve bad decisions and betrayals from within. Congress and in particular the Republicans are in chaos about Trump. There is a lot of "spooky" intervention going on here, on both ends, it seems, but my point here is that it is painfully obvious that powerful elements in the deep state are seizing or have seized the opportunity to do in Trump like they did in Nixon, as opposed to JFK, another situation entirely, although I mentioned it as well as a deep-state intervention against the presidency, but in a very different situation politically, including the president in question's popularity. I would assume that you are not a fan of Nixon and you've made it clear you're not a fan of Trump, I might venture to guess that you admire JFK, but anyway—does the fact that an almost totally invisible, ungovernable and unaccountable invisible hand is attacking presidents, whatever your opinion of them, not give you trouble? It is to say the least profoundly undemocratic.
What you say in the end is interesting, though;
Viewing any similar historical situation in terms of the underlying power dynamics, there are basically two outcomes: the person in power gets overthrown, or the opposition gets suppressed. Both outcomes are terrible for democracy, and this is precisely why authoritarians and demagogues must never be elected.
The beginning is more or less syllogistic to my political-realist mind but is an important truth contradicting what a lot of people imagine about our government being about "democratic pluralism" or what-not to any significant degree in terms of real change happening or people unacceptable to the already-ingrown power structure from Washington (and Langley and Quantico and Fort Meade, etc.) to New York to Boston to Hollywood to Silicon Valley to Alaska and Texas and everywhere else. Your syllogism then applies. Either
the person in power gets overthrown, or the opposition gets suppressed. That's how it works, pretty much all over the world, isn't it? It's certainly how
coups go, and my whole point in the post that started this particular discussion is that we presently are in a
coup executed against Trump from within the IC/deep state with a helping hand from all sorts of others in the media and elsewhere.
Then you say "both outcomes are terrible for democracy," well, certainly so; what's going on now is bad for democracy, but I don't believe in democracy or democratic-republicanism anyway, either as something to be aspired to, or as a reality in the U.S. (we have elections, sure, but we don't
really chose who governs us, the Presidency as an apparatus is something of a paradox, it's increasingly powerful but also the President, the man, is isolated and power-
less in many ways, over the years. And from time to time the "deep state" has taken it upon themselves to overthrow presidents. I assume that you agree that this is a terrible outcome for democracy (i.e. agree with what I said before, that this is a profoundly undemocratic process.)
Suppression of the opposition? The opposition in this case being what? What's going on here certainly isn't popular opposition, although it's encouraged and enabled by it in terms of feedback-loop propaganda that's being thrown out by the opposition that's actually taking the concrete actions against Trump, these being the profoundly undemocratic ones. Suppressing them got Kennedy killed. If you subscribe to that, which I think is not a very radical thing to say. Even if you believe otherwise as you say the government is a complex machine; as I said before it is sort of a beast, with a mind of it's own, or a hive-mind or a bunch of contradictory minds but it is a wild beast for the President or anyone else to ride, and the very blackest of it's beating, undemocratic heart right now is attacking Trump. Neither of us like Trump. But you must admit that this is problematic, yes?
Your last statement is a paradox, but a profoundly interesting one—
Both outcomes are terrible for democracy, and this is precisely why authoritarians and demagogues must never be elected.
1. We must preserve democracy
2. An anti-democratic regimé would be bad for democracy
3. We must never elect an anti-democratic regimé
#3 and #1 clearly conflict logically, as the statement itself is anti-democratic; although I assume you're speaking in a moral sense, in the sense that you'd oppose a statement like "Hitler did nothing wrong […legally, undemocratically]" or the Caesar's actions in 46
BC seizing and prolonging the dictatorship along with dominating the tribunate and the Senate on the road from Republic to Empire were legal and democratic, more or less, the people loved him anyway, as they did Hitler.
It's a paradox of democracy. Democracy cannot tolate undemocracy (a monarchist party running in the elections that wishes to establish a King and do away with elections); liberalism cannot tolerate illiberalism (hence the whole PC/SJW language- and thought-policing and indoctrination business), they both generate their opposites for that very reason.
And if Trump is seen as a potential tyrant, than this palace
coup is more analagous to what they call the "guardian coup," perhaps. The benign kind. If there is such a thing. Is there such a thing?
But it
is a coup.
Are you OK with that?
If you tolerate this… etc.
Now, I've said before that I would like to see a full on tanks-in-the-streets bankers-hanging-from-lampposts
coup in the U.S., that Jefferson quote about the tree of liberty being watered by blood, all that.
This is no that kind if
coup. But this is backhanded spook fuckery perpetrated by the deep elements of the military-industrial-intelligence etc. complex and it's not just because Trump is distasteful on Twitter and representative of a movement within the Republican Party that the Party apparatus is not fond of. T
rump is being done in by furtive elements within the government, nominally his government. The focus on Russia is for good reason, and it's not
just because those of us (I barely) who are old enough to remember being scared by watching Soviet ICBMs being rolled about on launcher-vehicles on TV may have a more than a bit of Russophobia in our blood, although that's a good propaganda move right there. (Although I'm rather quite a bit of a Russophile or at least "rootin' for Putin")
You could leave it there, and it should be troubling.
But also, and as far as I see it, most essentially, it's also a geopolitical thing. The "Pivot to Asia" is threatened. So they are going to take on the president, take on his populist appointments, and roll in conventional neoliberal-neoconservative Republicans as replacements.
This should be troubling.
Put away your Trump-hate for a moment; are you not troubled?
The Chomsky article isn't saying that the world is laughing at the US because the press and people are stupid for buying into it. It says that the world is laughing at the US because the US has done the exact same thing to other countries around the world.
Right—I'm saying more or less the same thing but it came out twisted maybe, or incomplete, in my post; what I'm saying is that the US press and people should be a laughingstock and gargantuan hypocrites because they think that this is a unique and special situation versus what happens all around the world all the time, often prompted by the US/USSR→now Russia, but the US really specialized in it. I do not buy into the idea that the Russians "stole the election" or any such idiocy; they did what anyone would do, tried to use propaganda (and
only propaganda, no assassinations, no tanks in the streets or whatever, unlike so many Cold War era efforts and beyond) to influence the situation to promote a candidate who would seem to be a geopolitical advantage to them; the U.S. even has official and non-official government organizations like the CIA-front groups USAID and National Endowment for Democracy, and has been doing far worse in terms of manipulating democracy, and right on Russia's doorstep, in fact in what is, but for a line on a map, Russia, that is the recent and ongoing crisis in the Ukraine and ongoing skullduggery all around the ex-Soviet/Eastern Bloc states, as I said above, encircling Russia with hostility, not to say nuclear weapons—and compare this, and the reaction of the then-USSR to other incursions, to the U.S. reaction in the Cuban missile Crisis. The US is doing all sorts of manipulations here, in Latin America, in the Middle East … on every continent really. Much, much worse than what people are getting histrionic about Russia doing. That's the laugh.