The people of the United States of America, have made their choice. The establishment media, here and world-wide have been rattled, they cannot believe that their confident predictions of an establishment victory did not come to pass. They cannot believe that from a population of 319 million Donald Trump was the chosen one.

Trump came across as a blatantly sectarian, misogynist and divisive racist. Hillary Clinton as a representative of the corrupt Washington establishment on the side of the wealthiest 1% and in the pocket of Wall Street. She was also a dangerous warmonger. Both Hillary and Donald were united by the noxious cocktail of wealth, greed and power in a land where the greediest and most competitive rise to the top, they both did. They were a perfect reflection of a social order that is the advanced capitalism of the United States of America.

Since I was a young man, the military forces of the USA have been killing poorer less armed people world-wide. Any attempt by the people of south America to use their natural or produced wealth for their collective benefit has been destroyed repeatedly by the connivance or direct intervention of these forces. The young men and women of the military acting under illusions of patriotism and freedom have become the rent collectors and the enforcers of the Washington / Wall Street consensus.

When the people of Vietnam wished to established their independence and social system it was not to the liking of Washington or world finance. The Gulf of Tonkin incident was staged to allow a full-scale war against its people. Three million people were murdered in by a wild spree of bombing, machine gunning and the ghastly chemicals produced by Dow and Monsanto. Thankfully, the USA lost this war to a lightly armed but highly motivated people, an unfortunate consequence being the death of 58,000 young men and women of the USA, most of whom were drafted, needed a job or were promised an education, some genuinely believed they were defending freedom and their homeland.

While but pausing briefly to lick its wounds, US imperialism returned to the fray with the destruction of secular governments in Iran and Afghanistan, the wholesale destruction of Iraqi and the killing of a million of its people, the destruction of Libya. The interventions against any government or people particularly in South America, but world-wide who made any attempt to extend democracy over economics.

Are the people of the USA natural born killers? No, they most certainly are not. The economic system of capitalism has been running in the USA since its foundation, born in the blood of its indigenous people and fed on the free wealth of slave labour, it thrived. The flood of millions of diverse hardworking immigrants to its shore boosted its wealth and power. Over time its wealth concentrated in fewer hands.  The theory of capitalism is that the expanding wealth of the few will trickle down through society and all will benefit, for a period when trade unions were strong and a more balanced Keynesian approach was in vogue, a large wealthy middle class emerged.  But as capital further concentrated and the ideas of Milton Friedman began to hold sway, regulation on capital was abolished, this new economic philosophy more than any before looks on all people and the entire world as its field of plunder.

At the same time in poor countries under the domination of the USA, labour – which would not be allowed to organise – could produce food, goods and services at a fraction of the cost that would be the case in the USA. Thus the production core of the US was stripped out and moved abroad for bigger profits. Thus the income and security of the middle class has been falling for forty years. These abandoned blue collar workers voted for Trump. Those who perceived that their wages were undercut by cheaper migrants, voted for Trump. Those who believed that every one would be killed by jihadists, voted for Trump.

The collapse of the USSR signaled the decline of socialist ideas world wide which coincided with the demise of trade union power. The Capitalist powers of  the Unites State combined with Europe and now unopposed, took to war, they needed war. The state collects taxes, persuades its  people there is an enemy, buys billions of dollars worth of killing equipment which makes vast profits for the few and persuades the unemployed they have a duty to their country and can make a living by killing ‘brown’ people somewhere. If there is not a war or an enemy, they will manufacture both.

This plundering and killing instinct emerges not from the people of the United States who like 99% of people in all the world just want to get on with their lives in peace. It emerges from the objective need of the 1% who want their capital to be free to plunder the world at will. Any person or state who stands in the way of that agenda will be vilified, any opposition within those states preferable inane mullahs, will be funded and armed. Internal and external pressure will be applied until the regime is changed – usually in a a bath of blood – to become a kneeling supplicant to the Washington / Wall Street consensus. Over recent years the Clinton’s  had been cheerleaders for such endeavors. When  bewildered and broken veterans returned from the wars, they were discarded. Many of them voted for Trump.

The philosophy of this Washington / Wall-street consensus dominates the media in the USA and effectively controls the collective mind of huge swaths of its people. In an economy driven by the poisonous cocktail of competition and greed, the greediest and the most competitive rise to the top. The people drained of their own self worth sought a leader, a Saviour, they saw that in Donald Trump, they perceived him to be outside the establishment. The establishment which had betrayed them over and over again. While it will not make a great deal of difference who becomes president in the sham democracies of Tweedledum and Tweedledee Dee, as the real power lies in the dictatorship of capital. The President can, however, influence a trend.

How should we respond to this result?  With tears or joy, either would be a bit over the top. From the perspective of the the safety of the world, Hillary, would I believe have been the most dangerous, as she had been focused on another regime change in Syria, one in a chain of regime changes and destruction’s. To that end, she was the most likely to try and ‘take on’ Russia and China. Agreements by the western powers not to expand NATO and its war machine to the borders of Russia were broken. Countries around Russia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Ukraine have been broken, Russia knowing it is next, is nervous. However, these are not the usual ‘brown’ people that Washington kills so easily. They are very capable nuclear powers, and as Putin said recently, (generally unreported); “The last time an army came over our borders we lost 25,000,000 people, it will not happen again, the future war will be fought by men pressing buttons, Russia may be destroyed, but so too will Europe and the United States”. Trump said he would talk with Putin, he would talk with anyone rather go to war. He said the US should withdraw from NATO, if this talking were to come to pass it could set the United States and the world on a safer and saner path.

Trump’s victory will be hard on the liberal heart and soul of the United States, it will encourage racism, sectarianism, sexism and an inward-looking nationalism. But the realities of power and time will mitigate these sentiments. On the economic front, he will ignore the $19 trillion debt and continue to borrow and print money ‘quantitative easing’ and start rebuilding the cities and attempt to drag manufacturing back from abroad, directions that go against all the precepts of the Republican Party. That promise of economic engineering gave him votes, note also, the huge support that Bernie Saunders had in the primaries, he was no great socialist, but had he run instead of Clinton, I believe he would now be president. There is a great deal more linking him to Trump than meets the eye, they were both on the surface at least, anti-establishment.

We in Ireland are adopting the same economic thinking, have growing inequality and have a controlled and timid media. This hides the fact that we are following the economic and social footsteps of the USA.  Perhaps, the outcome of the election and the intellectual desert, ‘The Poverty of Philosophy’ that was shown to be rampant during the election will alert us to its foreboding presence here. Maybe it will galvanise the good people of the USA  and ourselves to take an entirely more progressive path towards a  ‘Republic of Reason’. One way or another, we all live together – but – briefly on this tiny spinning sphere, we have no choice but make the best of what we’ve got and strive for its improvement.