RUTHFULLY YOURS

Hillary Rodham Clinton says Bernie Sanders is not qualified to be president. Senator Sanders says Mrs. Clinton is not qualified to be president. Both of them are correct, but there’s a bit more to the question.

Mrs. Clinton is a lifelong political grifter who poses as a feminist champion while riding on the coattails of her husband, an old-fashioned intern-diddling patriarchal chauvinist who just happens to have been the most gifted politician of his generation before his decline to his current diminished state. Like that of Michelle Obama, Mrs. Clinton’s so-called career in the private sector and in activism rose in neatly incremental tandem with her husband’s elevation through the ranks of political office. If you believe Mrs. Obama was being paid three-hundred grand-plus for vaguely defined administrative work or that Mrs. Clinton’s legal and cattle-futures-trading careers thrived without their patrons taking notice of the vast political power accumulated by their husbands, you are a naïf.

Mrs. Clinton over the years did successfully exploit her marriage to a powerful and vile man into two notable positions of her own: senator from New York and secretary of state. As a senator, she was — at best — undistinguished, merely punching the clock as she prepared to run for the presidency. Unfortunately for her, an equally ambitious nobody senator from Illinois was following the same program, and he is a better politician than she is. As secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton was catastrophic: Our allies were alienated, our enemies emboldened, our diplomats abroad slaughtered like livestock. Our national reputation is in tatters and our international prestige greatly diminished, thanks in no small part to her incompetence and that of the president she served.

Of his many outrageous campaign statements, perhaps Donald J. Trump’s most important ones concern his would-be role as president of the United States.

When told that uniformed personnel would disobey his unlawful order as president to torture prisoners and kill civilians, Trump menacingly replied “They won’t refuse. They’re not going to refuse, believe me.” Responding to criticism by the speaker of the House, Trump spoke like a Mafia don: “Paul Ryan, I don’t know him well, but I’m sure I’m going to get along great with him. And if I don’t? He’s gonna have to pay a big price.” Complaining that the United States’ international standing has declined, Trump promised to make foreigners “respect our country” and “respect our leader” by creating an “aura of personality.” Concerning the media, which he despises, Trump said, “I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.”

He encourages participants at his rallies physically to assault critics and has offered to cover their legal fees. He has twice re-tweeted an American Nazi figure. Only under pressure did he reluctantly disavow support from David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan. [He kept a copy of Hitler’s collected early speeches, My New Order, by his bed. He called on followers to swear allegiance to him, evoking Hitlergruß-like salutes.]

In these and other ways, the Republican presidential candidate breaches the normal boundaries of American politics. He wants the military, the congress, foreign governments, the press, and ordinary citizens to submit to his will. His demands, and not some musty 18th-century documents, are what count. Trump presents himself as billionaire, master dealmaker, and nationalist who can get things done, never mind the losers and the fine print.

We read over and over again how Donald J. Trump is running a campaign against “the establishment” in the Republican Party. The term sounds horrible and dangerous. But when you seriously think about it, the Republican Party “establishment” has one purpose—to maintain the party as a viable opposition vehicle to the plans of the Democratic Party. This is what a two-party political system should be about. Without two major political parties, America’s democratic form of government collapses and the United States becomes a socialist one-party state. The Trump candidacy threatens to destroy the two-party system.

Trump and his allies have made the term “establishment” into a dirty word. But Trump, an outsider with a history of supporting the other party, is trying to stage a hostile takeover of the GOP. The apparent plan is to make the Republican Party into a carbon copy of the European far-right “populist” parties that serve Russian interests. Some of these, like the National Front of France, are Russian-funded.

Interestingly, Donald J. Trump has a cordial relationship with the Moscow establishment headed by Vladimir Putin, but despises the Republican establishment in the U.S. For example, Trump has nothing but contempt for Mitt Romney, who ran against President Obama in 2012. For all his faults, Romney at least recognized the dangers posed by Russia. By contrast, Trump talks about a strategic alliance with Putin.

Putin’s network of shell companies and tax havens has recently been exposed in the so-called Panama Papers as a method by which he protects billions of dollars in personal wealth. One has to wonder whether Putin also maintains a global network of agents and sympathizers to make sure the Free World wilts in the face of Russian military aggression in Europe and the Middle East. One would have to be naïve to think no such network exists. Indeed, Trump is clearly a part of it, for he attacks NATO and various U.S. allies, including South Korea and Japan, and receives the open support of the Kremlin and its agents. Foreign intervention in an American presidential campaign has never been this blatant.

Supporters of Trump, who despise the Republican Party establishment, don’t like to talk about Trump’s ties to the Moscow establishment. This blindness has made it possible for Putin to strike gold, in the geopolitical sense, through Trump’s success in the Republican Party. It’s Trump’s foreign policy vision, such as it is, that could mean the demise of the Republican Party as a political vehicle for those who offer a realistic analysis of the military dangers posed by Russia and China. It’s true that Trump talks about China, in the sense that its economic power is a threat, but he is mute on the Russia-China military alliance in foreign affairs and the threat that it poses.

It is significant that Trump gets along better with Putin and his comrades than with “fellow” Republicans. That could be because he has mostly been a Democrat throughout his business career and has sought business deals in the former USSR and Russia. He calls Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and others in the GOP the worst of names, including liar, and yet Putin is considered by Trump to be a strong leader doing a good job for Russia. Trump even apologizes for the regime’s murder of journalists and political dissidents.