I don’t think any observer of last year’s election thought otherwise no matter what few lefties were dissuaded from voting by Clinton’s campaign of “There is no alternative”. It was Clinton’s failure to change or offer change more than Trump’s attraction that cause their sitting out.
Read this carefully. It foretells where the extra $54 billion for defense is going. And the consequences will cause the defense budget to only go up.
Trump’s reckless killing of civilians in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen is many things: barbaric, amoral, and criminal. It is also, ironically, likely to strengthen support for the very groups — ISIS and al Qaeda — that he claims he wants to defeat, given that nothing drives support for those groups like U.S. slaughter of civilians (perhaps the only competitor in helping these groups is another Trump specialty: driving a wedge between Muslims and the West).
But what Trump’s actions are not is a departure from what he said he would do, nor are they inconsistent with the predictions of those who described his foreign policy approach as non-interventionist. To the contrary, the dark savagery guiding U.S. military conduct in that region is precisely what Trump expressly promised his supporters he would usher in.
One of the things blocking unity in opposition to Trump is the fact that too many of his opponents have halo effects and horns effects relative to the Democratic Party and critics of the Democratic Party. We have forgotten that word that was so current about Bush in the 2003-2006 era — “nuance” — in the rush to imitate the hardball tactics of Republicans. I once thought that imitation would strengthen Democrat’s position; I now see that the long-ago stated values of the Democratic Party get undermined by such chicanery. Stop writing off people.
