We all know what happened. Donald Trump, that bumbling tycoon suddenly thrust into the political limelight, called for a wall to keep the immigrants – the Mexicans, the Muslims, the Syrians and the whoever else, out. The world went crazy. America actually shook itself and had an opinion, and the utterance today has nearly been forgotten. Don’t. I for one happen to think the wall is a good idea.

A wall, as we all know, has two functions. It keeps those outside out, and it keeps those inside, in. That’s what I’m interested in. Let’s help Trump build his wall, to keep him and America in.

Trump is representative of the USA. He’s not the potential bad boy of their politics but rather an honest expression of it. We can pick out some historical luminaries past and present.

Washington was a land thief and maniacal killer of Indians. JFK was an addict who nearly blew up the world because daddy (likely) wanted his Cuban playground back. Johnson made US business its first real money post WWII in Vietnam. Nixon gave the world the US$ and made the Arabs a power to behold. Carter was the born again who despite his religious representation let the CIA loose in South America causing untold horror. Reagan, a trained to read B-actor, opened the way for the banks and the philosophy of maximum profit[1], supplied both sides in the Iraq/Iran war, seeded the Afghanistan war and made Israel a nuclear power to behold. Where he left off, Bush Snr took over, a CIA chief and member of a family that supported Hitler[2], he set up the Middle East for war forever, including direct links with Bin Laden[3]. Clinton was a smoke and mirrors master[4] who defiled lands from Indonesia to Eastern Europe. Brains in bum Bush Jnr was in direct communication with God in Heaven (so he claimed)[5], and seriously smart Obama, the first black man to lead the nation and the first to win a peace prize by sending more troops to kill innocents, is a drone expert and facilitator of the dreaded Trade Agreements, which seek to give multinationals international immunity.

Beginning with the wipe out of perhaps as many as 19 million Indians[6] the US has been at war with someone openly or otherwise for most of its short life.

In 1993 William Blum wrote of the denial of a holocaust far more horrific than the Christian/Rome backed Nazi perpetration. He said that to the world (certainly most Americans), the few million deaths and the many more million condemned to lives of misery and torture as a result of US interventions extending from China and Greece in the 1940s to Afghanistan and Iraq in the 1990s, remain unrecognised[7].

To that dreadful list we need to add a complete universe of death and destruction, or in American parlance, money making activities[8]. American banks had leverage fun with digitally created money and short selling in the late 90s, creating such a dramatic effect on maize prices that in Africa millions died because they suddenly couldn’t afford to buy their 50c packet of ground meal[9]. The subprime housing debacle that burst in 2007 nearly killed off the rest of us with its attendant credit-default swap[10].

These are the sort of activities Bush labelled collateral damage[11]. It isn’t as though it was his invention – killing the innocent directly or indirectly (as in Pinochet’s rule, one example only[12]) has been an American thing for years - he happened to admit it. In some wars, and my mind fixates on - out of the news - Central Africa (the CIA’s 1960 playground[13]) where the US supplied the money, arms and reasoning for locals to fight; the numbers of dead are conveniently unknown. They could be 3.2, 6.4 million or more, but certainty it’s all pegged to the idea that what the US wants, it takes.

And that was only the beginning. The IMF[14], the World Bank[15],[16]and the Federal Reserve continue to be at their destructive best as their owners, the big banks, hold the money system and all of the emerging nations captive[17],[18].

Oliver Stone’s ‘The Untold History of the United States’ both takes us back in time and follows up with the incorporation of US action in South America, while the 1000s of unheralded works of many American thinkers highlight the devastation the US has brought to S/E Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Once neighbour Mexico is included with the killer trade agreement (North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)), there are few spots on the globe where Americans aren’t feared, hated or despised.

If it isn’t the cancer of the US$ and the giant organisations that make slaves and maximum profits (chronicled in the works of investigators like Naomi Klein and David Ransom of ‘Fair Trade’)[19], then it’s the guns and bombs, the stealth of the CIA and the perceived right of America to change international law as they go along (a trick they perfected at Nuremberg at the close of WWII[20]) that stinks to high heaven. America is so in charge of the UN that its ally Saudi Arabia (with its horrendous human rights record) got to chair the UN Human Rights panel…[21]

If Trump’s America is so obsessed with protecting itself from the immigrants, then, who to trust? Should the wall go up, who will America defend itself from as the local shootings intensify?

German-Americans make up the largest European ancestry grouping in the US ‘with almost 50 million people’[22]. There are British Americans, Italian, French, Iranian, Libyan, African, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese - but no Americans except for the scant few native Americans left. There are dreadfully poor Americans and the world’s richest by too far Americans. There are Christian fanatic Americans, Christian Americans who don’t know what Christianity is[23] and American Zionists who build Israel. Jews against Zion Americans, many types of Muslim bullied Americans, Saudi Arabian 7th Century belief system Muslim Americans[24], Buddhists, Iranian Americans who are in every science nook yet treated as 2nd class[25], Russian Americans and daily more ‘nones’ - those who openly declare they have no religious affiliation.

America in its frenzy to protect Americans has forgotten one thing, it is American-less.

‘Beloved Democratic Gen. Wesley Clark, while on MSNBC earlier this year, explicitly called for 'camps' for radicalized American Muslims’ reports the Institute for Public Accuracy[26]. Well Clarke old chap, you’ll need to expand that ‘a little’ to camps for everyone.

America has been preparing for such an expansion since before 9/11[27]. All should have noticed how their civil liberties have been tightened up, and if not they should read Jim Marrs, detailed John Ralston Saul, enigmatic Woody Harrelson, diminutive Robert Reich or just watch the first Hunger Games film. The enclosures for ordinary people there could simply be updated, with a dash of imagination.

The malaise that is America has to be something about an inability to see, hear and feel the truth about itself. Whistle blowers are routinely locked up in ‘free’ America and voices speaking out with the facts are sidelined[28">. ‘The Obama administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other presidents combined,’ reports Washingtonsblog.com.[29">

Rome was destroyed because of its excesses. Chalmers Johnson projected America would go the same way. Only Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden’s champion, wrote with sense: ‘Donald Trump’s ‘Ban Muslims’ proposal is wildly dangerous but not far outside the U.S. mainstream: professional political analysts have underestimated Trump’s impact by failing to take into account his massive, long-standing cultural celebrity... It’s important not to treat Trump as some radical aberration. He’s essentially the American id …’

The id, as a little research just taught me, is the part of the psyche that resides in the unconscious, the source of instinctive impulses that seek satisfaction in accordance with the pleasure principle[30">. Interesting.

Americans compete among themselves for the world’s biggest porn market, are the best at pulling hair-triggers over women’s rights, have the most missing women and children (or destination of) and have a sexual assault every two minutes. They practice alcohol abuse par excellence[31">, have the highest obesity and junk food ratios (so high the definitions have to change every few years) and the worst social equality rates[32"> since the royals were overthrown in Europe[33">. In America there is a failing education system[34"> which indebts thousands of graduates for life while contributing to the advancing poverty of unsustainable wages[35">, the dumbest level of security force personnel ever assembled which[36">, just for the wars since 2001 have cost the country US$8.36 million per hour[37"> (without adding in the new bombers approved by Obama, his drones, the Mexican border and other covert stuff, or the torture centres not yet closed)[38">. And, interesting in terms of the old anti-Communist debate, America has the most centralised (way beyond communist) nation-system of all while weekly the mergers continue. Per capita America is the greatest at destroying the environment, and by far the most legally corrupt society ever created. Finally, America is the world’s champion at arms sales, arms that must, logically, end up in the hands of those America is waging war against[39">.

Back in Bush Snr’s time, the Iraq/Afghan kill and cover up exercise was thought to cost US$1 trillion, now they’re mumbling six trillion[40">. One trillion dollars stacked will take us ¼ of the way to the moon. With all six trillion dirty dollars we could begin space flights with a Cohen-Stewart elevator without climate interfering rockets[41">.

And because the US$ is the reserve currency of the world we, the rest, pay for its overindulgence and bankrupt administrators. All this while statistically an American wastes, on average, 40 times what a person from an emerging/developing country will[42">.

‘America owes foreigners about $4.5 trillion in debt. But America owes America $9.8 trillion’ writes globalpublicsquare.com[43">. Should Trump’s wall go up it would no longer be necessary to print US$. Trillions would be saved by winding in the armed forces. What a relief! The debt creation in the rest of the world could finally stop while the wars and those affected could finally begin the long process of healing.

Remember, Trump didn’t invent bigotry. He didn't vote to kill one million Muslims in Iraq, Hillary did[44">. The Modern Voice put it right when they said, ‘we of the rest need to be even more worried about her (Mrs Clinton’s) neoconservative foreign policy views, and being a lackey for the military-industrial complex’[45">. Absolutely. Where Trump talks of pulling in Israel, Hillary knows her war chest needs more than US$3B and ‘Alludes To Military Action Against Iran, Wants Deeper Relationship With Israel.’[46">,[47">

The fact that the Clinton’s have demonstrated 110% willingness to bow to corporate control, favour a Clinton victory, keeping the Bush-Clinton-Obama-Clinton run going[48">. Even if I am wrong and Sanders or any of the mal-adjusted Republicans get in, Machiavelli’s words ring powerfully: ‘Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past’.

‘We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world - a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully,’ said Hunter S. Thompson back in 2002, reacting to the first Iraq war (and everything else). ‘We are not just whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us.’[49">

America, construct a wall high into the blue yonder and stay inside. Every few years we’ll send in a team to assess whether you can be let into society again but, understand, it will not be for some time because, do try to understand, the world needs time to heal from all the damage you have done.

Michael Lerner, writing for International Clearing House (ICH) says, ‘Many Americans hunger for a different kind of society - one based on principles of caring, ethical and spiritual sensitivity, and communal solidarity. Their need for meaning is just as intense as their need for economic security. Today the conflict over inequality is no longer between the working class and the middle class; it is between a tiny elite and the great majority of citizens. The crucial questions for future politics in the developed world will be how and when that majority develops a sense of common interest.’

I hope your values come through. I hope in your time behind the wall, you figure it out.

* Douglas Schorr is a former soldier and district commissioner in then Rhodesia.Today he is a committed critic of capitalism and colonial legacies, citing them as the source of poverty in Africa. His first book, The Myth of Smith, is available for sale on Amazon Kindle as are the short stories Mr Boomslang & 7 Other Rhodesian Fireside Tales. Schorr blogs at www.douglasschorr.com Follow him on Facebook and Twitter for regular updates.

END NOTES

[1] Reagan’s handlers let the all-destroying cat, Greed American Style Capitalism, out of the bag with the Milton Friedman and Chicago Business School philosophy; within months it had invaded all universities, launched from the pulpit of the MBA programmes.
[2] “His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act” … http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar
[3] http://www.thedubyareport.com/bushbin.html
[4] Allegations of wrongs plague the Bill Clinton & family charity (hundreds of millions involved) (see latest Clinton Foundation scandal) and his work with George Bush. "I think I had the lowest net worth of any American president in the 20th century when I took office," he (Clinton) told host David Gregory, but now ‘Clinton is considered the wealthiest living president and among the top-10 all-time wealthiest … according to the website 24/7 Wall Street’.
[5] Just one source among 100s … Worse than Watergate by John W Dean
[6] Killed in the most dreadful of ways
[7] Killing Hope by William Blum
[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G91892EuhyU
[9] See discussion at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/interviews/stiglitz.html
[10] Read ‘I.O.U.’ by John Lanchester, and http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/12/14/americas-middle-class-is-shrinking-so-whos-leaving-it/
[11] John R Saul comments on the rising collateral damage of war since 1970 to 2003 in ‘The Collapse of Globalism’
[12] http://www.democracynow.org/2013/9/10/40_years_after_chile ... Pinochet is only one dictator supported. Many dozens more.
[13] The events surrounding the death of the UN Secretary General, the toppling of Lumumba and the installation of Mobutu in the early 60s was at one time described as the CIA’s greatest covert war. Superseded by among others their on-going activities in the Ukraine.
[14] See Michael Hudson: ‘IMF changes the rules, blesses Ukraine default on $3b loan from Russia’
http://thesaker.is/the-imf-changes-its-rules-to-isolate-china-and-russia/ Also ‘The criminal behavior of IMF executives’ by Prof. James Petras http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-dirty-work-of-the-international-monetary-fund-lays-the-groundwork-for-worldwide-financial-conquest/5498234
[15] Read https://www.globalenvision.org/library/23/1524 and listen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bktyHW9R-00
[16] There are huge questions often raised over the accountability and value of the American Red Cross: After ½ a billion $s were donated to help in the Haiti 2010 disaster ‘the number of permanent homes the charity has built is six’ - http://www.npr.org/2015/06/03/411524156/in-search-of-the-red-cross-500-million-in-haiti-relief
[17] ‘Africa has the fastest-growing continental economy on the planet. And the thing that has been growing fastest of all is debt’ (see http://www.economist.com/news/21631955-worrying-build-up-borrowing-coming-african-debt-crisis ) – how can that be when Africa has supplied the 1st world with its raw materials for the last 200 years? Even Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) projects are used to legally bleed Africa … see Bond @ http://stopthebleedingafrica.org/gaming-naming-and-shaming-licit-financial-flows/
[18] My post on Mugabe of December is an example, and in the news right now tiny Haiti serves as a prime example of the subjugation through debt. (see https://globalsouth12.wordpress.com/an-unending-debt/)
[19] The widely reported December 2015 case of Hedge-fund man Martin Shkreli and KaloBios Pharmaceuticals is classic but more normal are the (old) examples Saul quotes in ‘The Collapse of Capitalism’ … Nike paid $1.60 for shoes in Indonesia and sold on at $70, and Walmart’s underpricing and therefore wage killing selling of underpants at $10 for 7. Sam Harris’ examples of how US companies reward Chinese smart phone makers will make most folk cry, see http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1382396/Workers-Chinese-Apple-factories-forced-sign-pledges-commit-suicide.html
[20] ‘If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged’ is attributed to Chomsky.
[21] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/anger-after-saudi-arabia-chosen-to-head-key-un-human-rights-panel-10509716.html And see an interesting discussion –enlightening in other aspects too @ http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/02/26/the-united-nations-exposed-who-is-in-control/ This is more important than just a job given to a crony – the game of religious division allows the industrial-military complex (the 1%’s machine) to keep wars ongoing, more ferocious, and ‘The anti-Shia ideology that dominates the Wahhabi movement began (with US complicity) in Saudi Arabia and puts the lives and wellbeing of many Shia Muslims at risk worldwide - yet to date, the UN and world powers seem unable to recognise the extreme dangers this presents’ … Judith Brown quoting http://yemen-news-today.org/2015/12/24/wahhabism-anti-shia-ideology
[22] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2408591/American-ethnicity-map-shows-melting-pot-ethnicities-make-USA-today.html
[23] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wifUXxsOPMA
[24] http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/01/why-the-us-is-stuck-with-saudi-arabia/384805/
[25] https://theintercept.com/2015/12/18/congress-just-put-iranian-americans-and-others-at-risk-for-becoming-second-class-citizens/
[26] http://www.accuracy.org/news-releases/
[27] There are many reasoned and logical reports over the value to the establishment of the 9/11 attacks and of the money made by those forewarned. 9/11 gave the US licence to attack anyone anywhere. See General Clarke … http://www.globalresearch.ca/we-re-going-to-take-out-7-countries-in-5-years-iraq-syria-lebanon-libya-somalia-sudan-iran/5166
[28"> How many Americans read of John Kiriakou, Jeffrey Sterling, John Stockwell?
[29"> http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/01/obama-imprisoned-whistleblowers-times-longer-presidents-combined.html
[30"> http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/id
[31"> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kelly-fitzgerald/15-shocking-alcohol-stati_b_7010680.html
[32"> Inequality extends to the law courts as a matter of course; far beyond normal excesses of targeting non-whites is the immunity of white as this example illustrates … ‘his defense team successfully got him off the hook for jail time, claiming he was a victim of “affluenza, where his family felt that wealth bought privilege and there was no rational link between behavior and consequences’ see http://www.salon.com/2015/12/29/ethan_couch_the_ultimate_mamas_boy/?source=newsletter
[33"> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43694.htm That excludes US allies like Saudi Arabia and my own South Africa under the whip hand of big business
[34"> The No Child Left Behind Act is now called the Every Student Succeeds Act —weak curriculums and graduation requirements make high school diplomas useless
[35"> https://www.aclu.org/prison-crisis and Google US judge jailed for jailing young people for money.
[36"> The need for cannon fodder & do as told personnel called for the military to admit annually ‘100,000 men who had failed its (already low) qualifying exam’. The money is in being a private contractor. As for making major, ‘if you haven’t been court martialed, you’re going to be promoted to major’. See ‘The Complex’ by Nick Turse. The reports ‘recent high school graduates could not meet minimum entry test standards to enlist in the Army’ (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/31/opinion/the-counterfeit-high-school-di...) so that’s why rules have to be bent. The Onion has a take on this too … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LROkEx21CAU
[37"> ‘Total Cost of Wars Since 2001: Every hour, taxpayers in the United States are paying $8.36 million’ … https://www.nationalpriorities.org/cost-of/
[38"> ‘We estimate there are as many as 1.3 million survivors of politically-motivated torture living in the United States’ - See http://www.cvt.org/where-we-work/united-states#sthash.rI2rwC2n.dpuf but that doesn’t dig at all into the international network of torture centres; this opens questions http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/video/guardian-report-on-secret-network-of-us-torture-centres-in-iraq but the discussion on the CIA’s network (including South Africa … www.news24.com/.../CIA-may-have-paid-SA-lump-sum-for-tort...) has only just opened.
[39"> ‘…much less discussed, however, are the rapidly accelerating arms deals between the U.S. and Gulf monarchies. Saudi Arabia and Qatar …’ See http://www.salon.com/2015/12/30/nothing_to_be_proud_of_the_real_american_exceptionalism_is_selling_the_most_weapons_in_the_world And … ‘decades of documented evidence reveal that the Saudis are the primary conduit through which Western cash, weapons, support, and directives flow into mercenary armies of extremists, indoctrinated by Saudi Wahhabism – a politically-motivated perversion of Islam’ @ http://www.mintpressnews.com/saudi-anti-terror-coalition-a-facade-to-hide-yet-more-terrorism-behind/212411/
[40"> http://time.com/3651697/afghanistan-war-cost/
[41"> See The Science of Discworld III
[42"> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/american-consumption-habits/ and ‘Americans constitute 5% of the world's population but consume 24% of the world's energy’ … http://public.wsu.edu/~mreed/380America
[43"> http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/21/who-owns-america-hint-its-not-china/
[44"> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43671.htm
[45"> http://themoderatevoice.com/clintons-ties-to-military-industrial-complex-are-as-serious-a-concern-as-her-ties-to-wall-street/
[46"> See http://www.mintpressnews.com/clinton-alludes-to-military-action-against-iran-wants-deeper-relationship-with-israel/212252/
[47"> ‘Hillary Clinton’s greatest billionaire backer has been Haim Saban, a dual United States-Israel citizen and hardline supporter of Israel, who has openly commented, “I’m a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel.’ See http://mycatbirdseat.com/2015/06/91758hawkish-Hillary-Clinton-and-her-Israel-first-political-sugar-daddy-haim-saban/ If Iraq/Kuwait build up was Bush’s opening salvo when still Vice President, in Gadaffi Mrs Clinton left a total mess that Europe is now having to clean up … ‘Hillary helped overthrow Gaddafi’ …
http://www.thenation.com/article/191521/hawk-named-Hillary
[48"> The two families are intertwined anyway sharing getaways, dinners etc. George and Bill are involved in what appears to be a self-serving charity (http://www.wnd.com/2015/10/clinton-foundation-fraud-began-with-exploitin...) Having family on both sides of the race for another crack at the big $ is akin to betting black and red.
[49"> Chomsky, Parenti et al have been saying for years ‘… when I consider the greatest threats to human civilization, it’s the United States that stands out above other potential risks. And I’m not the only one: According to a 2014 global survey, the world as a whole voted the United States to be the No. 1 threat to world peace “by a large margin.’ http://www.salon.com/2015/12/20/the_united_states_is_scarier_than_the_islamic_state/

* THE VIEWS OF THE ABOVE ARTICLE ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR/S AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE PAMBAZUKA NEWS EDITORIAL TEAM

* BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Please do not take Pambazuka for granted! Become a Friend of Pambazuka and make a donation NOW to help keep Pambazuka FREE and INDEPENDENT!

* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.