Palaver and Parable: Trump’s Babble

“All lies and jests
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest”

– “The Boxer,” Paul Simon

Listening to Donald Trump is like staring at a record spinning on a turntable and finding your mind spinning with your eyes. Something playing here makes you feel crazy, not in the Patsy Cline sense of her singing “Crazy” about lost love, but in the sense of the song’s original title – “Stupid” – according to Willy Nelson, who wrote it.

Trump is like the mobster Vincent Gigante who walked around Greenwich Village in slippers, pajamas, and a bathrobe in an effort to convince federal prosecutors that he was crazy. Trump’s babble is a similar act. Only a very stupid person would be fooled by it. The Iranians are not stupid, nor should we be.

His latest palaver came yesterday morning when, after days of threatening to “obliterate” Iran’s power grid if it didn’t open the Strait of Hormuz within forty-eight hours, he now says he is postponing such strikes for five days since the U.S. and Iran have held “productive conversations.” He said:

I have instructed the Department of War to postpone any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for a five-day period, subject to the success of the ongoing meetings and discussions.

Shortly after, Iran denied any such negotiations were taking place. Iranian PRESSTV’s headline read: “We negotiate with enemies with impact-driven strikes,” as it pounded Israel with waves of missiles.

One’s forgettery would have to be operating at full-speed to forget Trump’s past use of “negotiations” as a cover for attacking Iran. He is a treacherous liar and this is probably another blatant delaying tactic that will last a day or two or maybe even five. This becomes especially true as Simplicius  and others report that the U.S 82^nd Airborne “have gotten their deployment papers,”  and Marines are heading for Iran and that Pakistan may be secretly staging U.S. troops to enter Iran from the east.

On February 27, the day before the US/Israel attacked Iran, I asked “Is it just a coincidence that as Trump amasses military strike forces to the west and south of Iran, Pakistan attacks Afghanistan, which countries line the 950 mile eastern border of Iran?”

In response to such attacks, Trump said, “Pakistan [that has 170 or so nuclear warheads] is doing terrifically well.”

When the U.S. mainstream press reports that Trump is weighing his options for troops inside Iran, you can be quite certain he has already decided to do so. I have just heard from a friend that his military son has gotten all his shots and his unit is being deployed. To where? He can’t say.

This war is moving inexorably toward a most dangerous phase, and as Americans and growing numbers of U.S. soldiers oppose it, the chance of a false flag attack in the U.S. to generate outrage toward Iran from Americans grows with it. Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern has just warned of that possibility.

For years, the general consensus among the mainstream and the independent media has been that Trump’s rise twice to the presidency has been a break with tradition because he is so bizarre a character with no political experience, etc. This assessment has come from those who love or hate him. I have argued the opposite for years: that he is an establishment figure from the start, dressed in costume, so to speak. Few have agreed. I recently wrote:

Some say that is because he is a complete anomaly and was able to twice become president by some strange twist of fate. If that is so, it would be the first and second time in modern history that it happened. A man with no political experience, a comical reality-tv joke, a bombastic fat party boy with weird dyed hair who talks like a version of an East Coast Valley Girl, a womanizer, a very wealthy New York real estate wheeler and dealer, etc. gets the votes of middle Americans who are losing their farms and factory jobs and are angry at the government. All sorts of explanations have been given for this “anomaly,” except that it was not one, except in appearance.

Now it seems that others may be coming around to the same opinion. In a recent article, Seeing Trump Clearly, Craig Murray, the former British diplomat, author, and Scottish human rights activist, who attended and reported on Julian Assange’s extradition trial, wrote:

It is comforting to see Trump as a buffoon, to accept the facade he presents of a blustering and ill-educated ignoramus, who swings wildly between policy options, and who does not understand the world of geopolitics.

But that is nonsense.

Although Trump seems to be a clown, Murray says, it would be a terrible mistake to take seeming for being, for Trump is vicious and very dangerous and wholly intent on destroying the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, Iran and the Iranians, while supporting Israel’s takeover of Lebanon and Syria for Greater Israel and the United States. Yes, it is true that Trump and his venal family are also making a financial killing swinging deals throughout the Middle East, but his policies are part of a long-term U.S. strategy. Most importantly, Murray writes:

It is essential not to lose sight of the bipartisan nature of the United States’ long term plan. In a very real sense Trump is continuing – if greatly accelerating – the policy under Biden, who protected and enabled the Genocide in Gaza. The success of this US policy is phenomenal. Just consider that only 18 months ago the Zionist “Presidents” al-Jolani of Syria and Aoun of Lebanon were not in power. Both were brought to power as a result of US-aligned military action, by Israel against Hezbollah and by the CIA- and MI6-sponsored HTS forces. Put in place by Biden, they are now central to Trump’s strategy. (my emphasis)

The same could be said for the bipartisan nature of the U.S. strategy toward the Ukrainian proxy war against Russia and the aggressive moves toward China, forecast ten years ago by the late great journalist John Pilger with his powerful documentary, The Coming War on China.

The other evening a man went for a walk around his residential neighborhood in a small very liberal (Democratic Party ) New England town. He encountered no one except a squirrel, a few crows, and a host of black vultures circling overhead. As he was turning back home, a man emerged from the side door of a large house that had been posting the Ukrainian flag since February 2022. He recognized the man as the one who had donated a large cache of books about the CIA, Russia, Philip Agee (former CIA dissident), etc. to the local library. The man started scattering jelly beans on the lawn. The walker asked him what he was doing and the man said he was doing it to keep the Iranians from invading. The walker said, “But the Iranians aren’t invading.” To which the man replied, “See, it’s working. The Russians are afraid of jelly beans.”

Edward Curtin: Sociologist, researcher, poet, essayist, journalist, novelist….writer – beyond a cage of categories. His latest book is AT THE LOST AND FOUND: Personal & Political Dispatches of Resistance and Hope (Clarity Press).