US President Donald Trump has signed an order to strip back the federally-funded news organisation Voice of America, accusing it of being “anti-Trump” and “radical”.
A White House statement said the order would “ensure taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda”, and included quotes from politicians and right-wing media railing against the “leftist”, “partisan” VOA.
Trump may be narcissistic and senile but he still obeys his oligarch masters, probably from the usual motives of greed and fear.
I don’t know what your local children will learn at school but he’s fast earning himself a footnote in the international history books as the epoch that marks the tipping point into waning US power.
I may be wrong but I think the problem with the US cult of presidents/“great man of history” theory is that people like Trump keep the US populace speculating what he “wants” or “thinks” instead of on what his function is and what is actually happening.
The kleptocrats run every nation, afaict. There may be a few small exceptions, we will see, and see if they can keep it that way.
The difference is the kind of kleptocrat. For a long time most of the west has had Establishment capitalists, people who have organized the status quo to benefit themselves and protect their wealth.
What we are witnessing now is the displacement of the old Establishment by a new breed, Disaster capitalists, who don’t care about the status quo and thrive on social and regulatory chaos.
Russia has had this breed ever since the fall of the USSR. America is getting a taste of it now.