On the fantasy worlds of Democrats trying to free Palestine from the river to the sea and Republicans trying to turn the White House into a puppet regime of Moscow, writes Caitlin Johnstone.
Harris v. Trump. (Greg Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons/ Collage – Cathy Vogan)
By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com.au
One of the dumbest things about U.S. politics today is the way both parties constantly attack each other for holding foreign policy positions they don’t actually hold in order to create the illusion that they have meaningful disagreements on foreign policy.
Donald Trump has been campaigning on the cartoonishly ridiculous claim that Biden and Harris have been unsupportive to Israel even as they continue to unconditionally support its genocide in Gaza, which is a perfect mirror of the way Democrats spent years falsely claiming that Trump is a secret agent of the Kremlin even as he ramped up cold war aggressions against Russia.
They need to campaign on these completely fictional disagreements regarding the enemies and allies of the U.S. government, because they do not actually have real disagreements regarding the enemies and allies of the U.S. government.
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley)
During a speech in Florida on Friday, Trump claimed his new opponent Kamala Harris “stabbed Israel in the back” by skipping Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocide apologia speech before Congress the other day. He contrasted her with himself, saying that he has “done more for Israel by far, than any other president” with measures like recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the illegally occupied Golan Heights.
“She doesn’t like Jewish people. She doesn’t like Israel,” Trump said of Harris, who (A) is married to a Jewish man, (B) has an established track record of groveling before the Israel lobby, and (C) released an obnoxious statement denouncing anti-genocide demonstrators who protested Netanyahu’s speech as anti-semitic terrorist supporters.
This is a continuation of the way Trump and Republicans have been absurdly claiming that Joe Biden has “abandoned Israel,” despite this president having delivered tens of thousands of bombs and thousands of missiles to Israel since Oct. 7 while bombing Yemen, Iraq and Syria to suppress foreign retaliations for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and providing Israel with limitless diplomatic and PR cover this entire time.
The self-described Zionist Biden couldn’t be more supportive of Israel and its agendas unless he was actually physically in Gaza personally shooting medical workers with a sniper rifle.
When Netanyahu met with Biden this past Thursday he told him, “From a proud Israeli Zionist to a proud Irish American Zionist, I want to thank you for fifty years of public service and fifty years of support for the state of Israel.”
Ahead of Netanyahu’s meetings with both Biden and Harris, a senior administration official told the press that there was “no daylight between the president and vice president” on their position on Israel.
There is no way to square this with Trump’s rhetoric about Biden and Harris being evil anti-semitic Israel haters. But that’s not going to stop Republicans from making these claims anyway.
This is much the same as the way Democrats and their allied media spent years shrieking that Trump was secretly working for Vladimir Putin, when the strongest evidence against this claim was always that Trump is an insanely hawkish cold warrior who spent his entire term actively working against the interests of Moscow by initiating the arming of Ukraine, shredding nuclear treaties, implementing wave after wave of sanctions against Russia, bombing and occupying Syria, undermining Russian energy interests and more.
It was a narrative that was completely divorced from reality, held in place by nothing but rote repetition and authoritative-sounding assertions. Which is why nobody who was actually paying attention to Trump’s real material actions was surprised when Mueller failed to indict a single American for conspiring with Russia at the conclusion of his investigation in 2019.
In reality both Democrats and Republicans are more or less in lockstep on supporting Israel and subverting Russia, and on every other major foreign policy issue in Washington.
But you can’t run a political campaign on “Vote for me, I’m exactly the same as my opponent,” so they need to invent these fantasy worlds wherein Democrats are trying to free Palestine from the river to the sea and Republicans are trying to turn the White House into a puppet regime of Moscow.
If both parties stopped pretending to be different from each other regarding the way the U.S. empire is run, Americans would begin to notice that they’ve fallen victim to a scam designed to trick them into thinking they have some control over how their government moves and behaves on the world stage.
Like the jewelers who all work for the same employer to create the illusion of competition in John Steinbeck’s The Pearl, Republicans and Democrats put on a fake performance of opposition to keep the locals from noticing that the real power in their country is completely unaccountable to their votes.
Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes. For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she’s trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.
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