Some independent commentators have picked up on the fact that the mainstream media, the so-called 'Leftist' media has all but ignored the recent 'bombshell' Rolling Stone article that exposes the fact that several members of congress were actively involved in the failed January 6 insurrection.
Why? Why would the media ignore this? It's like the goose
that laid the golden egg, a chance to take down several Republicans – and yet
they're ignoring it. The January 6 investigation should be like Watergate with
around the clock coverage and televised hearings. But instead it barely gets
noticed and while the congressional investigation continues – tepid is a word
that comes to mind. Given the magnitude of what happened and the nature of
emerging revelations since, one would think this would be a major story.
But in many respects it's not. There is a focus on some of
the individual actors who stormed the Capitol building and there's attention
being given to Trump, and figures like Steve Bannon who was recently held in
contempt, but thus far the investigation seems to be ignoring the fact that
members of the US Congress and the Republican Party were involved in the lead
up to January 6 – pointing to the reality that it wasn't just an unruly mob
stirred up by Trump's speech, or even an unforeseen event. On the contrary
there is a growing pool of evidence suggesting this was planned and
coordinated. It was an insurrection, an attempt to thwart the 2020 election
results and subvert the constitutional process. It was an attempt to re-install
an electorally defeated president. By all estimations it was a coup attempt. It
was weak, poorly planned, in some cases half-hearted, and (like all coups)
resting on flimsy legal arguments, but that's what it was.
To reiterate and expand on what I've already argued for in
previous pieces, I am convinced that the reasons for this orchestrated
downplaying, this failure to pursue these actors (involved in what must be
described as treason) is rooted in America's larger global crisis, the ongoing
threat to the nation's superpower status. The situation has become acute and it's
important to step back and understand what has happened over the past few
decades. Only then can we contextualise the whitewash that's taking place.
The pressing nature of the current crisis is not just the
fault of Trump though he certainly accelerated and amplified existing problems.
The US turned all its energies toward the Middle East in the aftermath of the
2001 terrorist attacks. The plan to secure Central Asia fizzled as Afghanistan
could not be secured. Twenty years later there are no pipelines, no minerals,
and no secure bases. The plan to re-draw the Middle East also failed. Iran came
out ahead in Iraq. The plot to topple Assad in Syria failed. The plot to
assassinate Erdogan and break the AKP's power in Turkey failed. Qaddafi was overthrown
and killed in Libya but the country was not secured and quickly descended into general
chaos and civil war.
About the only 'victory' came in Egypt, and that was after an
unforeseen setback. The Arab Spring uprisings had ousted longtime US ally Hosni
Mubarak in 2011 and led to the installation of the Muslim Brotherhood. Israel's
security was under threat as the development threatened the unraveling of the
1978 Camp David Accords.
Subsequently the US supported the 2014 al-Sisi led coup and
the situation in Egypt was quickly stabilised – the dictatorship re-established,
Cairo's relationships with Washington and Tel Aviv returned to the status quo.
War continues to ravage the larger region. There's still
fighting in Syria, Lebanon is near collapse, the devastating war continues in
Yemen, and from coast to coast, there's all kinds of trouble and fighting
across North Africa. There have been 'victories' in Somalia and Sudan and in
the 2011 secession of South Sudan, but these 'gains' are marred by civil war,
instability, and coup d'état.
US objectives have failed and in the interim the nation
suffered a severe financial crisis. More than a decade after the 2008 financial
crisis and recession, portions of the middle class (and the totality of the
working class) have not recovered from its effects. The larger social crisis
continues and seems at present to be growing exponentially. The nation is
increasingly on edge. Then Donald Trump appeared on the scene which exacerbated
already existing domestic problems and within just four years, US standing on
the global stage was knocked down several pegs. The already extant crisis was
made much worse.
During this twenty-year period of chaos, distraction, and
defeat, Vladimir Putin secured his hold over Russia and while the country is
still economically weak and riddled with internal problems it's able to hit
outside of its weight class and actively works to arrest US expansion. One area
of American success during the early twenty-first century was in the realm of
NATO enlargement. The Balkan projects and wars of the 1990's produced mixed results
but ultimately were unable to secure the region for Atlanticist control. And
yet, despite the problems associated with Yugoslavia's fragmentation, the
United States successfully schemed to 'capture' virtually all of the old Warsaw
Pact, almost all of the former Eastern Bloc nations are now part of NATO, the
EU, or both.
But now the US faces serious challenges when it comes to Europe's
eastern frontier. Pouring salt on old wounds, and provoking Moscow on a
repeated basis, the Russians have drawn lines and have started to counteract
American measures and machinations. Putin is not going to let NATO place troops
and missile systems on his Western border even while they stir up trouble
within Russia's political system. He's read the writing on the wall and is
actively working to counter the US-led effort. He has worked to keep the
Belarus 'buffer' solidly in his camp. Transnistria remains as a roadblock to
NATO expansion in terms of Moldova and potentially Ukraine. He installed a
brutish but effective puppet regime in Chechnya and has mostly pacified the
situation. The Western backed schemes of Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia were
slapped down in 2008 and Putin was emboldened by the West's inability to
respond. It must be noted that Saakashvili picked a terrible moment to act as
Bush was at the end of his failed presidency with only a few months left before
the election, and the US was in the midst of the global financial crisis which
took a serious downturn just a couple of weeks after the brief Russo-Georgian
War. In other words, US attention was directed elsewhere.
Having lost the last round of politics in Ukraine, Putin
annexed Crimea and continues to back an insurrection in the Russian speaking
region of Donbass. Championing anti-liberalism and anti-modernism he has found
some friends and potential allies among the European Right. His overtures of
friendship and collaboration rejected by the US in the aftermath of 9/11, in
some respects he's becoming the very aggressor the West dreamed up in their
propaganda mills (a kind of self-fulfilled prophecy) and yet there's a timidity
within the US regarding actual open confrontation with the Russian military.
Neither the US or NATO is ready to act, and in the meantime the internal
situation within Europe has faced serious deterioration as has the relationship
between Brussels and Washington – realities which strengthen Putin's hand –
once again, the crisis situation creating new allies for him.
In the halls of American power there's an air of desperation,
a real push to get a handle on the European situation and reunite the continent
in an American-led bloc directed at Russia. Russia was on the way to being dismantled
and subjugated in the 1990's. Yeltsin was largely a tool and creature of US
interests. But then on New Year's Eve in 1999, Putin came to power, 9/11
happened not long after, and the US turned away during most of that critical
decade.
But if there's frustration and angst with regard to Europe
and the situation with Moscow, this is surpassed by the near panic over the
rise of China. While America pursued its unipolar policy – a project that began
in earnest with the fall of the Berlin Wall, China was already on the rise.
Emerging from the Mao era, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) turned its back on
Mao and Marx and embraced an authoritarian form of capitalism – selling out its
working class, indenturing its people to Western financed sweatshops to produce
cheap goods for the new ostentatious style of consumerism which emerged in the
1990's West and particularly in America.
The US had hoped to shape and manage China's growth and
development and the many mechanisms and relationships established during the
Nixonian rapprochement stood ready to be implemented. But the US got distracted
in the Middle East and China's growth was rapid and unprecedented. In just
thirty years China went through phases of industrial and technological transformation
that took Western nations more than a century to accomplish. It has been astonishing
to behold and by the Obama era, the US Establishment was in something of a
panic – realising they had not properly anticipated China's rapid development,
its wealth, status, and potential for investment – collectively an existential
threat to US power in Asia.
Xi Jinping came to power in 2012 and his leadership has
proven transformative. He is undoubtedly the father of the new China and by
virtue of the vast wealth that was accumulated in the previous thirty years,
and the need to invest it, and along with tensions vis-à-vis the United States in
terms of the East Asian theatre, Xi pushed the nation in a new direction, into
the inevitable result of its capitalist trajectory – China shifted to the imperialist
mold. The One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative was launched. Now known simply as
BRI (the Belt and Road Initiative), Xi sought to create what has been described
as the New Silk Road, a network of trade and infrastructure spreading across
the world island of Eurasia and Africa. Money must be invested and wealth
reaches a point that transcends mere quantities of currency. It translates into
power – power that must be used or it will be squandered and lost. Wealth and
markets are transformed and questions of control and exclusion are just as
important as acquisition. Blocking your rivals and enemies and starving them
for resources becomes just as critical as securing them yourself. And now with
the investments comes the need to secure them, and to provide security for
markets. Even now China is embarking on the same type of imperial project seen
before in the rise of the US Empire. Some view it as 'empire creep' akin to
what happened in the United States, others as an inevitable development of
trans-national capitalism, and yet others as a deliberate policy framed in a
duplicitous narrative.
It's demonstrative of the fact that money is ultimately a
type of power and it reaches a point that when applied to a nation – it becomes
transformative, resulting in empire, conquest, intrigue, and war. It's a road
other nations including the United States, the UK, France, Germany, and Japan have
been down before.
The Twenty-First century was predicted to be a time of
resource wars and indeed they're already upon us. They're not marketed that way
as men don't like to march to war and die over water, minerals, and barrels of
oil but it's already happening and the stage is being set for further
high-stakes conflict.