Please read this article from Will Saletan. Notwithstanding the points Saletan makes (and I think he forgot how Trump has played inconsistently with China and the tariff issue, first protecting certain lines of clothing articles, which incidentally protected his daughter's line of clothing, and now maybe calling a truce as Trump has to ensure he protects Sheldon Adelson's holdings in Macau), I can make a lawyer's case FOR Trump.
However the case FOR Trump involves saying the following: "Trump is part of the Fascist International (Russia, Turkey, Israel, Modi's party in India) fighting international Islamic fundamentalism. This attack on Trump is therefore a domestic fight over the direction of foreign policy--and there is a criminalization of politics."
My take on the early stage of the Cold War has been the corporate power in the United States, fearing all the strikes that shook corporate America in late 1945 through 1946, needed anti-Communism to undermine the New Deal. The easy pickings were those who were New Deal internationalists who sought peace with the Soviet Union (Russians) to avoid WWIII. Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White were two New Deal internationalist advisers of high repute, and needed to be taken down. And they were. From there, the demonization proved fairly easy to convince the returning vets to turn in their neighbors and their union leaders. The eventual undermining of New Deal values was completed by the 1970s, with hippie libertarians joining in the chorus led by corporate America that government sucks, government always sucks, and you must act as an individual and not in a union or any other "collective." We went from national health insurance is Communism which is treason to simply believing national health insurance is treason. It is how the propaganda continues to work on oldsters and aging Baby Boomers. The difference in the American political discourse now is that does not work for most of the youngers. This has led Republicans and their business backers to coalesce even more deeply with evangelical Christians, who are fighting for the return to 19th Century Comstockery, and pushing for ever more extreme forms of gerrymandering, including holding on to the Electoral College. It also means promoting white supremacy rule in the United States at the expense of democratic or republican values (let alone New Deal values).
Here, we can argue against Saletan's article, saying each of Trump's actions, even his bowing to Kim in North Korea, which Saletan again forgot something, such as Trump calling for a suspension of joint US-South Korean military exercises, which has incensed and caused some fear among South Korean military and civilian officials, is designed to bolster the coalition of leaders who truly understand the Islamic fundamentalist threat.
Wait a minute, I hear you cry. How about Turkey and Saudi Arabia, then? Aren't they led by Islamic fanatics? Yes, they are. But they are Muslim fanatics on the side of the International Fascist interests in fossil fuels and nuclear power. They believe in the secular Fascist principles. What makes the Iranians, for example, suspect is they are promoting a Islamic fundamentalist REVOLUTION, which could and likely would undermine Western fossil fuel interests. It shares that in common with the earlier secular Pan-Arabists, who were such a danger to Pax Americana, though many foreign policy establishment advisers would love to have Nasser back at this point--irony city.* Thus, the presence of Turkey and Saudi Arabia becomes a case of mere strange bedfellows, no different than Churchill saying he would side with Stalin in WWII against Hitler. The bottom line is this is all consistent with the coalition's imperial or international goals.
Wait a minute, I hear you cry. How about Turkey and Saudi Arabia, then? Aren't they led by Islamic fanatics? Yes, they are. But they are Muslim fanatics on the side of the International Fascist interests in fossil fuels and nuclear power. They believe in the secular Fascist principles. What makes the Iranians, for example, suspect is they are promoting a Islamic fundamentalist REVOLUTION, which could and likely would undermine Western fossil fuel interests. It shares that in common with the earlier secular Pan-Arabists, who were such a danger to Pax Americana, though many foreign policy establishment advisers would love to have Nasser back at this point--irony city.* Thus, the presence of Turkey and Saudi Arabia becomes a case of mere strange bedfellows, no different than Churchill saying he would side with Stalin in WWII against Hitler. The bottom line is this is all consistent with the coalition's imperial or international goals.
I don't think Trump wants this "defense," at least not yet. Trump's supporters, especially those with Lee Greenwood singing in their heads, would squirm at this "defense." However, I think this "defense" explains a lot in a way to show more consistency in Trump's behaviors, including his attempted shake-down of the leadership in Ukraine. This "defense" gives Trump a way to say he is not a traitor to America and could allow Trump to say he simply has a different foreign policy vision than much of the less reactionary foreign policy establishment, making the Democratic House's attack on Trump no more than an alleged criminalization of politics.
* We are in this mess with Islamic fundamentalism because our foreign policy establishment, since the 1950s, has embraced religious zealotry in the Middle East and then elsewhere, as a bulwark against secular Pan-Arabism (one may start with this thesis paper to get an understanding for this conclusory statement). This was part of why the legendary sociologist, C. Wright Mills, referred to our establishment as filled with "crack pot realists." Of course, this is what happens when one goes off in search of monsters, as John Quincy Adams warned our nation nearly 200 years ago. It is also why I find this several minute stretch in "Captain America: Winter Soldier" so radical. It dovetails with Chomsky's point about Nazi foreign policy operatives insinuating themselves into American foreign policy at the time the US was protecting Nazis after WWII even as it was prosecuting some high level Nazi leaders in Nuremberg.
