A
few points from Monday's presidential debate
As expected,
Monday's presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald
Trump, didn't make us wiser. However, it would be useful to focus on
a few moments, anyway.
Generally,
the rhetoric of the two candidates was based on simple conclusions
concerning various US internal problems, which anyone knows and
actually experiencing to a much higher degree than themselves. This
type of rhetoric, of course, is very usual for the establishment
politicians around the globe in our days.
For example,
you may notice that they frequently used the phrase "we have to
...", or, "we need to ..." deal with (put whatever
issue you like in the dots), which actually only identifies the
problem, does not provide a solution for it.
The debate
was full of such generalities. Another example is the phrase of
Hillary Clinton that “We just have a different view about what's
best for growing the economy, how we make investments that will
actually produce jobs and rising incomes.”
Well, she
didn't give a taste of how she will do all these things, but her
"glorious past" tells us the opposite. She supported
international trade agreements that actually bring further
deregulation in favor of multinationals, which means that they can
proceed in mass layoffs at will, sue entire nations demanding huge
amounts in compensations, and generally, establish the new era of
corporate feudalism.
At this
point, we should mention an interesting fact from the debate. When
Trump fiercely attacked Clinton about the NAFTA agreement, also
accusing Bill Clinton for his role on it, Hillary defended herself by
saying “I was against it once it was finally negotiated and the
terms were laid out.”
She didn't
try to defend the agreement, as the corporate lobbyists would like.
Instead, she tried to find an excuse for herself in the context of
the "politics of lesser evil". This is another significant
mark left by Bernie Sanders and his movement. Hillary continues to
try to persuade for her relocation further to the Left of the
political spectrum, in order to attract voters from the tank of
Bernie Sanders mass movement.
Furthermore,
it was quite impressive that Hillary tried persistently to identify
herself as part of the US middle class, probably in order to
highlight the fact that the billionaire Donald Trump, naturally,
could never be part of it. It's still a joke, of course, because of
the millions she received by some of those who are highly responsible
for the dramatic decline of the US middle class today.
And, of
course, we shouldn't expect something like "student debt
cancellation" like Jill Stein or Bernie Sanders clearly state
simple and straight, neither from Clinton nor from Trump.
Also,
Hillary couldn't hide her anxiety to name the US "enemies",
showing that she actually can't wait to lead Cold War 2.0. In the
context of cyber-attacks, she clearly named Russia, China, Iran,
despite the fact that there is no proof that the Russians hacked the
DNC:
“... we
are seeing cyber attacks coming from states, organs of states. The
most recent and troubling of these has been Russia. There's no doubt
now that Russia has used cyber attacks against all kinds of
organizations in our country, and I am deeply concerned about this. I
know Donald's very praiseworthy of Vladimir Putin, but Putin is
playing a really tough, long game here. [...] We need to make it very
clear — whether it’s Russia, China, Iran or anybody else — the
United States has much greater capacity. And we are not going to sit
idly by and permit state actors to go after our information, our
private-sector information or our public-sector information. And
we're going to have to make it clear that we don't want to use the
kinds of tools that we have. We don't want to engage in a different
kind of warfare. But we will defend the citizens of this country. And
the Russians need to understand that. I think they've been treating
it as almost a probing, how far would we go, how much would we do.”
At this
point, Trump responded correctly, pointing Hillary's obsession with
Russia:
“I
don’t think anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the DNC.
She’s saying Russia, Russia, Russia, but I don’t — maybe it
was. I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could
also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on
their bed that weighs 400 pounds, OK?”
Probably the
most interesting part of the debate came when both actually tried to
defend themselves concerning the chaos in the Middle East and Libya.
Trump intensively repeated that he was against the invasion in Iraq.
He also condemned fiercely the intervention in Libya. Yet, the most
interesting here is that Hillary didn't try to defend this decision.
Instead, she tried to "drag" Trump into the "club"
that made these decisions, as if she wanted to present him equally
responsible:
“Donald
supported the invasion of Iraq. [...] He actually advocated for the
actions we took in Libya and urged that Gadhafi be taken out, after
actually doing some business with him one time. But the larger point
— and he says this constantly — is George W. Bush made the
agreement about when American troops would leave Iraq, not Barack
Obama.”
This is
actually an indirect admission by Hillary that the US invasion in
Iraq was a disaster, as well as, the intervention in Libya.
Finally,
Trump sent some signals to the neocons and the US deep state, showing
that he won't hesitate to follow their agenda, which proves that he
is only a reserve of the establishment against establishment's
favorite Hillary Clinton. As he said characteristically “... you
started the Iran deal, that’s another beauty where you have a
country that was ready to fall, I mean, they were doing so badly.
They were choking on the sanctions. And now they’re going to be
actually probably a major power at some point pretty soon, the way
they’re going.”
Again, what
we have here is the worst couple of presidential candidates, from the bipartisan
establishment, for decades. Yet, the American people do have
alternatives. It's up to them to beat the bipartisanism in the
oncoming elections through a political earthquake that would create
an unprecedented moment in the US history.
(Full
debate transcript: time.com)
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