Trump 2.0: The Next Narrative

Trump 2.0: The Next Narrative

by Brad Wolf

671 words

Americans have long been subjected to a political and corporate sleight-of-hand, the creation of a narrative that says it is doing one thing while behind the scenes doing another. America’s corporate tyrants work with our elected officials to claim they are keeping us safe and secure in our continental cocoon of North America as they spend $1 trillion a year preparing for, and engaging in, war across the globe. 

This false narrative is part of the long-standing military-industrial complex narrative. It propagates fear so that Americans open their national treasury and allow it to be drained of hard-earned tax dollars to purchase weapon systems that do not work, empty inventories of ammunition on unarmed populations, and create endless wars when diplomacy would have resolved the issue. 

The development, storage, and use of weapons is not intended to keep us safe but to keep corporations profitable. They need a private corporate police force to subjugate foreign lands, extract the necessary resources, and repress indigenous populations who might object to such a theft. The U.S. taxpayer foots the bill for all of this. The Democratic Party and the Republican Party both conspire in this ongoing crime. 

We are now at a moment of Trump 2.0. Trump’s administration will constitute an ideal fundraising tool for the Democratic Party to raise huge amounts of money battling the diabolical Trump, but it will also be used to divert attention from the Democratic Party’s complicity in committing genocide with Israel in Gaza, in fueling the Russia-Ukrainian war, in massive and unnecessary military spending, and in allowing corporate directors (who are also corporate donors to the Democratic Party) to be placed in high ranking government positions.

Trump 2.0 will indeed pose severe challenges for many vulnerable populations here at home and across the globe. Trump himself is a repugnant character. But we will now see his every word and breath used to create hysteria so that we do not notice that the corporate donors to the Democratic Party want the same thing that the Trump administration wants. Namely, the continuation of that all-important private corporate police force paid for by US taxpayers to dominate foreign lands and take their resources. 

Let us not create a moral equivalency between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, or between Trump and Biden, but rather let us highlight to Americans that they are about to get another narrative containing some truth, some falsehoods, and some hysteria, all being aimed their way so they will not object to or attempt to prevent corporate theft abroad or here at home.

There is, to be clear, many compelling reasons for concern with Trump 2.0. Our immigrant population, women, LGBTQ+ population, and other minorities, as well as peace and social justice activists, will all come under intense fire during the Trump administration. The point is not to obsess about Trump, but rather to obsess about the entire American political system.

Asking the current American political system to fix these problems is like asking cancer to cure us. Let us focus on the outrageous policies of the Trump administration but let us continue the broader effort against the malevolent relationship between corporate America and political America. Those ties must be cut once and for all. The only way that will happen is when the American people intervene in that relationship massively and nonviolently.

Such intervention will require risk. It cannot be done by writing a check or liking a Facebook post or sending another scripted email to Congress. It will mean hitting the streets, nonviolently but meaningfully. 

Outrage at Trump must be channeled to the broader system that allows Trump and other elected officials, Democrat and Republican, to commit war crimes, gut our national treasury, and benefit their corporate donors, all while pointing the finger at the malevolent character on the other side of the political aisle, or the evil foreigner on the other side of the globe. It is time to reject these narratives. The truth of corporate tyranny is outrageous enough. Let us stay focused on that.

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Brad Wolf, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is director of Peace Action Network of Lancaster, PA, and co-coördinates the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal. His new book on the writings of Philip Berrigan is entitled “A Ministry of Risk.”