Battle of the Billionaires

And the Eclipse of American Exceptionalism

It’s time to ask if the surprise outcome of the 2024 US Presidential Election reflects a growing rift between different factions within the technocratic elite or if it’s only a psyop to engineer a low-level civil war between rednecks and cosmopolitan Americans. Many still believe Trump, with Robert F Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard in his team, will rein in the Deep State and put the interests of ordinary Americans first before the grandiose nation-destroying plans of the woke illiberal intelligentsia. Others, especially on this side of the big pond, believe Elon Musk bought the election and will use the second Trump Presidency to abolish democracy. This is odd because both Elon Musk and RFK claimed that if the Harris / Walz ticket won, this could be the end of American democracy as we knew it. Authoritarians have a habit of always accusing their adversaries of the same crimes they commit themselves. Senior figures behind Kamala’s ill-fated campaign, from John Kerry to Bill Gates himself, talked openly about overturning the first amendment to ward off the omnipresent danger of malinformation. What we are witnessing are the death throes of the American Dream of freedom and democracy, with both concepts reduced to little more than commodities.

I once believed electoral outcomes could change the balance of power. Alas we witness a mere pantomime of engineered outcomes. In 1979 many disgruntled leftwingers wondered how Maggie Thatcher could appeal to the aspiring working classes. The next year Ronald Reagan captured the imagination of the American middle classes. By the time the pendulum swung in the other way and Tony Blair entered 10 Downing Street with a whopping majority, it became obvious to me he only did so because he had big business on his side. Indeed, since 1974 Rupert Murdoch’s media empire has backed the winning horse. After backing the Tories from 2010 to 2019, the Sun newspaper flipped again to back the uncharismatic Sir Keir Starmer.

Before the results of the recent 2024 US Presidential race rolled in, one thing was certain in my mind. The multi-trillion-dollar Military-Biotech Industrial Complex would not relinquish power without a fight. If the winner posed a threat to the big banks and corporations, the Deep State would move heaven and earth to prevent him or her from entering office. With Queen Kamala, they had their perfect puppet, who judging by her performance over the last four years, would do nothing to hold her string-pullers to account.

Yet despite his rhetoric about draining the swamp and his promises to clamp down on corruption in the 3-letter agencies, Donald Trump appointed Susie Wiles, a longstanding political lobbyist whose former clients included Pfizer and Big Tobacco. The self-obsessed orange man may have cold-shouldered his former neocon Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and UN ambassador, Nicki Haley, but judging by his choice of Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, and Christian Zionist, Mike Huckabee, as US Ambassador to Israel, the US Deep State looks set to pivot away from direct confrontation with Russia over Ukraine and to support Israel in an all-out war with against Iran. Will this make World War Three more likely as most key Middle East countries, such as but Saudi Arabia and Egypt too, are now in the BRICs bloc. We may well be witnessing a rift in the Western Military Industrial Complex between the neoconservative Israel-First faction and the neoliberal anti-Russian faction. Just as the US manoeuvres its way out of the Ukrainian quagmire and Vice President elect, JD Vance, threatens to stop subsidising the defence of its European NATO allies because they fail to uphold American values of free speech. Meanwhile former Dutch PM and new NATO Secretary, Mark Rutte, has threatened to expel the US from NATO if they agree a compromise with Russia to end the war over Eastern Ukraine. This may mark a shift from a US-centred world to a multipolar world with European elites now more belligerent than their American counterparts, but with only 7 weeks of his tenure to go, Biden authorised airstrikes over Russia with the UK ready to deploy its Storm Shadow missiles in an escalation that could further drain NATO’s resources.

Some pinned their hopes on Matt Gaetz, an outspoken social conservative able to speak truth to power over Mossad’s potential involvement in the mysterious death of Jeffrey Epstein, but had to stand down amid sexual misconduct allegations.

Another sign of the times is the hysterical reaction to the appointment of Robert F Kennedy Jnr as Secretary of Health and Human Services. This seemed to annoy some faux-progressive commentators much more than Trump’s electoral success. Carole Cadwalladr took to X (formerly Twitter) to call RFK not only a vaccine-denier, but a fluoride-denier (rather ironic as fluoridation is not common in continental Europe). By the Guardian journalist’s warped logic, if you demand transparency, accountability and above all, liability from multibillion-dollar corporations, you are somehow denying people the benefits of the last century of scientific advances. It turns out RFK has never opposed vaccination if it has passed the strictest safety trials. Every debate about the safety and effectiveness of the coercively administered covid shots with Fauci fans always ends with references to the polio outbreak of the mid 20th century and the dramatic decline since the late 1950s. Yet by far the biggest factor is rapid decline in infant mortality over the last 70 years has been better sanitation. Children born in the 1960s and 70s were among the healthiest in history. Lifelong disabilities or chronic illnesses reached historic lows after post-war slum clearances and urban renewal, until a curious reversal of fortunes since the late 1980s when the incidence of neurological disorders and allergies started to increase. This happened to coincide with a massive expansion in the childhood vaccine schedule, most notably for MMR, and legislation to give vaccine manufacturers blanket immunity for any injuries or deaths that can be attributed to vaccines. In most Western nations, it is up to governments to pay damages. Of course, there are many other potential causes of rising health conditions such as processed foods, additives and, possibly, exposure to electronic gadgets and radiation. While people are living longer, most adults over 30 are now on one form of regular medication or another (that’s most over 50s on statins, beta blockers and/or diabetes drugs and a growing number of middle-aged adults on psychoactive meds). However, RFK would not only have to contend with the combined might of BigTech and BigPharma, but also with Trump’s choice of Surgeon General, Dr Janette Nesheiwat, a covid vaccine evangelist. I fear other global events or manufactured scandals may prevent RFK from having much influence.

The next administration may well have to deal the collapse of the US Dollar as the world’s reserve currency. All it takes is for China and Saudi Arabia to sell off US T-Bonds (treasury bonds) if the US continues to support Israeli aggression or bombs Iran on its behalf. The US Deep State can then blame the ensuing economic meltdown on Trump and let vulture funds asset-strip the nation.