Trust is Failing On Both Sides of the Pond

By Tom Luongo
Source

I’ve been warning for a while now that we are pushing towards an inflection point in history.  With each passing week it feels like events are accelerating as change to the status quo is everywhere.

In Europe, the EU leadership and Theresa May are so desperate to stop Brexit they can’t stop lying about everything.  In one day we have May’s government found in contempt of Parliament for not releasing the full legal advice of her Brexit deal and the European Court of Justice pronounce that the U.K. can unilaterally cancel Brexit if they want to.

They are this desperate because there is a real probability of May’s horrific deal not getting the thumbs up from parliament. That said, the arm-twisting behind the scenes is likely epic as one by one May’s remaining cabinet members come out in favor of the deal because they see they have no other option.

At the same time France is literally on fire thanks to a good ol’ fashioned tax revolt, which reviled, unprepared and arrogant President Emmanuel Macron cannot fathom.  Macron’s handling of these protests has been abysmal, displaying a level of contempt for the French people so profound he may wind up more hated in the end than Theresa May.

Both of these odious people make no bones about their real loyalties and the more they talk, the more they try to sell their latest betrayal of national interests for Brussels’ the more the intensity of the hatred of them increases.

This is not a linear thing.  It’s the kind of situation that goes from murmurs and shrugs to outright violence in a matter of days.

Especially when you come out and tell the very nationalistic French people that nationalism is akin to evil.

In Macron’s case raising the tax on diesel fuel was a bridge too far.  Pathetic global warming, globalist ideologue that he is, he castigates the people who are materially harmed by this tax as ‘thugs’ and then doubles down when they get even madder.

So it’s no surprise that his calling a moratorium on it for six months was rejected by the protesters.

They know they can’t trust Macron.

With France’s tax rates already nearly the highest in the so-called first world the burden of this tax would have fallen heaviest on the people just barely surviving existing ruinous government policy.  All taxes are marginally regressive, even progressive income taxes.

And those taxes which are a flat rate tax on a per item basis are the most regressive.  Just because you make more money doesn’t automatically mean you are going to eat more food or drive your car more.

Hence, the tax falls disproportionately as a percentage of marginal income on the lower economic strata.

And Macron tried to sell himself as a reformer.  There’s nothing unique about raising taxes in France.  If Macron wanted to be novel, he would have lowered fuel taxes.  You improve the lives of people by removing the burden of paying for worthless little leeches like him and the massive bureaucracy that supports his patent idiocy like taxing fuel to combat global warming.

The less said about Theresa May the better but just so everyone is clear May gave the EU everything they wanted, not because she’s a bad negotiator but because she’s a bad liar.  Every day she lies telling everyone who will listen (and that number is dropping daily) that she’s working for the people of Britain.

No she is not.  She’s working for the British ruling class and its entrenched bureaucracy who are in league with their counterparts in Brussels to erect an unassailable oligarchy across Europe.

May, Juncker, Tusk and Merkel have intentionally run the clock out while doing the political calculus that the Tories are so scared of a Labour takeover that they’ll all roll over in the end, hold their nose and vote for this complete sell out of what’s left of British sovereignty.

But, if you think I’ve been harsh to this point I’ve saved the best for my own so-called President, Donald Trump.  For a while I gave Trump the benefit of the doubt, thinking he was doing his best beset by a U.S. political establishment which is the worst kind of cruel.

But, after the fiasco of the mid-terms and his systematic capitulation to all things neoconservative, Trump has become a parody of himself on foreign policy. By allowing the paranoid John Bolton to convince Trump that everything neocon is in the interest of America First Trump has now embraced every foreign policy lie he campaigned against.

His own lack of moral center has led to his having a complete lack of moral courage in confronting the vast apparatus arrayed against him.

To the point where he doesn’t announce policy decisions that he knows are unpopular with not only his base but also the center of the country he needs to get re-elected in 2020.  He leaves that job to the disgusting and stupid Mike Pompeo.

Trump’s need to be liked is his Achilles’ heel and it’s been used by the Deep State to destroy him.

He fancies himself a deal-maker and so it was easy for him to be led by his nose (because remember, he doesn’t believe in anything except leverage) by Bolton et.al. to unilaterally abrogate any treaty that is inconvenient to their cause of world subjugation on the basis of it not being fair to America.

Hence, Russia’s new weapons are something the U.S. can’t deal with so to counter them the INF treaty has to go.  It’s regrettable, a shame, bad, whatever Trump tweets out about it.

The imperial power always grows increasingly paranoid that everyone is out to destroy them.

Because the imperial power knows in its heart that it’s awful.  That it has abused and destroyed people the world over and they are angry.  They know this is true and because they would want revenge, they expect everyone else to want the same thing.

The politically strong dictate and only negotiate out of weakness.  Leaving the INF treaty while leaving the door open to a deal is an admission that Russia’s weapons have to be countered by breaking the treaty to put missiles on Russia’s doorstep because Bolton can’t conceive of a day where Russia and the U.S. are not adversaries.

I’ve said from the beginning that Trump would have to allow the neocons to run things for a while and then when their schemes ran aground, he would reverse them all and use that reversal to win the broad support of a war weary and pissed off American electorate, regardless of the Democrats’ blatant and upfront voter fraud.

But, Trump is beyond that now.  He told us of his hatred for Iran on the campaign trail and all Bolton and Mattis and the rest of the Gang That Can’t Invade Straight had to do was sell Trump on the tired canard that more death, more troops, more weapons is the path to victory.

Trump is so desperate for a couple of tenths of GDP he sold out his people for this.  He’ll stay in office just long enough to go from savior to villain, just like every other potential U.S. reformer.

The take away from the failures of these three main leaders of the increasingly unfree world is that confidence in them, their governments and the systems that make up and support them is failing rapidly.

And confidence lost is never regained.  Once the public trust is breached it is never regained.  And that’s where rapid societal change sprouts from, catching those who think they are in control off guard completely, like Macron was over the diesel protests.

All of these people are weak-minded fools.  James O’Keefe of Project Veritas Action wrote a brilliant article over the summer in which he defined the difference between moral courage and physical courage.  Nearly every man is willing to lay down his life for his cause.  That’s physical courage.

It’s easy you don’t have to live with the fallout of your acts since you’re dead.

But moral courage is willing to be the villain, to stand athwart the crowd and risk your reputation for what you believe in.

This is why the Tories in parliament will vote for May’s Brexit Deal.  They don’t want to be blamed for the mess of a hard Brexit they fear.  This is why Macron will implement the worst neoliberal policies.   He doesn’t want to be called a traitor by the media and oligarchy who made him.

And it’s why Trump will not MAGA. He was willing to Drain the Swamp as long as it didn’t cost him and his family his brand and his reputation.  He was willing to talk the talk but not walk the walk.  Now he just rambles on Twitter like a pathetic loser while Putin’s prophecy about his presidency comes true.

“Presidents change,” he said to Oliver Stone in the Putin Interviews, “Policy doesn’t.”

And as we approach the moment where a critical mass of people see the costs of maintaining this vacuum of moral courage we call a society rise above the benefits of it the closer we are to the worst kind of chaos.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   

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