Who said the
following - President Trump, a friend of President Trump or an opponent of President Trump ?
Our government has been for the past few
years under the control of the heads of great allied corporations with special
interests. It has not controlled these interests and assigned them their proper place in the whole system of business;
it has submitted itself to their
control. As a result there have grown up vicious systems and schemes of governmental
favouritism far reaching in effect upon
the whole fabric of life, touching every inhabitant of the land , laying unfair
and impossible handicaps upon competitors, imposing taxes in every direction,
stifling everywhere the free spirit of American enterprise.
This tyranny, this control of the law, of legislation and
adjudication by organisations which do not represent the people, by means which
are private and selfish, specifically the conduct of our affairs and the shaping
of our legislation in the interest of special bodies of capital and those who
organise their use -- this alliance of political machines with selfish business to
do is exploitation of the people by legal and political means.
We have seen many of our governments under
these influences cease to be representative governments, cease to be
governments representative of the people, and become governments representative
of special interests controlled by machines which in their turn are not
controlled by the people. The gentlemen whose ideas have been sought are the big
manufacturers, bankers and heads of the great railroad companies. The masters
of the government of the United States are the combined manufacturers and capitalists
of the United States...........................
It was not a
friend or opponent of President Trump but a President of the United States of
America, Woodrow Wilson, who was saying such things a few years before the financial collapse that
climaxed in 1929 and brought the United States commercial civilisation to its
knees and frightened the whole world of business and politics.
Now President
Trump is promising America prosperity by reducing curbs on capital, bringing
industrialists even closer to the centre
of government, making companies that
have fled to foreign countries come back home where eventually they may bring their lower pay regimes with them, thus
facing the possibility of American companies being overtaken by cheaper
economies abroad or producing cheaply at
home goods the world is willing or able to buy now from abroad - while their customers in the USA will pay taxes for imported goods that may
get in, meanwhile strengthening the
military in America and Europe so as to make America great again, with
industrialists and bankers still as powerful as before but, in theory anyway,
more under Presidential control.
US personal Presidential
power is being built up through arguments with those already powerful in America (while there is still time for it),
with the press, the spying services,
vulnerable industrialists, and by contradicting policies which have helped political
parties to flourish until they think they cannot do without them, enmity
towards Russia for example. Opposition to Russia
has been fostered in Europe and
America since WW2 and governmental policies, military, economic, and
European union policies, have been built
on it. Maybe President Trump hopes to create stability - not peace, but stability -
by agreement and manoevering within the United States rather than by military
threat abroad.
But the Presidential determination
to build up the military -- does it mean that if he doesn't need the military for foreign wars, it may be needed
for service on, as it were, the Home Front?
Surely not for that
kind of Homeland security !
The ideas of Woodrow Wilson at
the start of this blog were quoted in
1920 to a New York State law court by the Irish trades union organiser James
Larkin - who died 70 years ago this year - possibly Larkin knew more about the realities of
American government than the court knew
- or wanted to know.
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