The Establishment Shrieks

From this moment on, it’s going to be America First. Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families. We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs.  Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength. I will fight for you with every breath in my body -- and I will never, ever let you down. (Donald Trump, Jan. 20, 2017)

Usually President inaugural addresses accomplish little on their own. This was not the case in 2017. Just by saying the words he did, Trump changed everything.

Why?

Because what he said was hitherto utterly disallowed as rhetoric within the public sphere: America First.

The instant these words came out of his mouth, I could practically hear the entire world Establishment shriek in horror.

In those two words, coming from a U.S. President, the edifice of the Establishment, which has depended for nearly a century on complete and utter unanimity within the political arena on the issues that really matter, is now shattered into tiny little pieces.

Never again will the words Trump spoke be off limits. They are fair game in the political arena now. And that alone change everything.

Why is "America First" so dangerous a concept to the Establishment. Why has it been taboo (or rather instant political death) for any politician to say them since World War II?

The reason is that despite what Bernie Sanders wants us to be believe, Establishment is not just the class of powerful and wealthy people who pull the political and economic levers of the country.  It is more than that. All ages of history have been dominated by such groups.

The Establishment, since the end of the First World War, has been centered on a specific concept of societal change. The core idea of this concept has been, or at least has evolved to be, what we can identify as globalist internationalism.

Simply put, this is the idea that in the Twentieth Century and beyond, the concept of individual nation states is outdated and must be replaced by a cooperative world-wide agreement.

All other ideas are secondary to this concept. It matters little what form this global governance takes place, or how it comes about. All that matters is that it happens.

All citizens in the west must come to see that nations as we know it, including all the individual nations of Europe, and including especially the United States of America, are a harmful anachronism that serve as toxic barriers to human progress. They must be done away with, gradually over time (so as not to freak people out too much along the way). But eventually all nations must be folded into supranational blocs, and eventually into a global government, which is under the domination of wise and powerful people who will the right actions that benefits the world as a whole. That's the Establishment's view of itself, at least.

If you're like most people living today in the western world, this concept of inevitable world government probably seems self-evident to you, so much that you might have a hard time wondering how anyone could argue against it.You've probably seen it in so many science fiction movies over your lifetime as something that will inevitably occur and which will be good. Maybe you've gotten misty-eyed singing along with John Lennon about the "world will live as one" when we get rid of nations (and religions, and private property).

If such is the case, you can pat yourself on the back as being a good Establishment follower. You were never supposed to believe that there is any sane alternative to this. The only other option was world-wide nuclear war and destruction, etc.

Since around 1920, nearly the entire political class of the Western world---in particular most of the most powerful people of the last century---have enthusiastically embraced this concept of inevitable global integration of power.

So important was it for them to achieve this goal that any dissent (that is, an advocacy of true nationalism) was the  easiest and quickest way to get one labeled an extremist. Entire generations of scholars and journalists have come of age and gone through their careers having embraced this idea, because they figured out along the way that to go against it was professional suicide. All "intelligent" people got this message during their education.

Besides, it just makes sense, after all.

As a corollary to this idea, it became expected that any United States President would recognize that as a "global leader," he or she has a responsibility that goes beyond the crude and outdated concept of simply looking out for the interests of Americans. Doing so would be the equivalent of declaring war on progress itself.

Of course, at times one says what one needs to say to get elected, but no one expects any politician to follow through on the vulgarities of placing America first. Once it office, a President is elevated to being one among a set of cooperating global leaders who are expected to consult each other for a wise mutual course of action that benefits the world as a whole. At least, that's one way of putting it.

We are very deep into this era. Along the way, the concept of "America First" became so foreign to the political Establishment that it barely makes sense to them.  Lindsay Graham, one of the most die-hard globalists in the Republican Party, pretty much said these exact words. "I don't what it means." Rarely has there been a better example of what Orwell wrote concerning Newspeak, of how the English language in Oceania had been re-engineered so that certain words and phrases, such as the rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence, lost their meaning or became nonsensical.

"The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible." ---Orwell

But now with Trump it's too late to go back. After his speech, there is no putting the genie back in the bottle. If Trump does nothing else in his entire term, he has breathed rhetorical life into a concept that has been forbidden for a century, and which is kryptonite to the Establishment to even contemplate.

For all his bluster against billionaires, and even his opposition to the TPP, Sanders would have been a very pro-Establishment President. This is because he has no disagreement in principle with folding U.S. sovereignty into a global governance framework. He would have simply demanded that it be the right kind of agreement, based on the right set of principles, including of course "Climate Change,' which has been one of the the biggest hammers in the Establishment globalization arsenal over the last twenty years.