There is a saying that a stopped watch tells the right time twice a day. It is true, but that watch is never conscious of when it doesn’t tell the right time. It tells the time twice a day, despite itself. It is not a conscious act nor one that we can congratulate. Something similar happens with people. There are those who sometimes tell truths despite themselves, amongst them, Trump. His racism, misogyny, corruption, praise for Nazis and contempt for law provoked the ire, over and again of liberals and some supposed Marxists.
However, this also happens when he says truthful things. Trump sometimes says out loud what liberals say amongst themselves, in the Country Club or in government meetings they take part in. Trump, perhaps due to his style or lack of intelligence or a combination of the two says things that we all know, but that guys like Biden, Obama and Clinton know it is better not to say out loud. And just how stupid Trump is can be seen in the news item that he sacked 300 employees from the energy agency and later realised that they were the one who oversaw the nuclear arsenal.[1]
During his first presidency, a journalist asked him about Putin’s murderous practice of eliminating the opposition. Bill O’Reilly told him that “Putin is a murderer” and Trump replied, “Do you think our country is so innocent?” The liberals screeched to the high heavens, how was he going to compare, Bush, Clinton, Obama and Biden to Putin? Or any other president for that matter.[2] It was one of those times that Trump’s stopped watch told the right time. The US has overthrown more governments than anyone else, murdering presidents such as Salvador Allende in Chile, Patrice Lumumba, the first president of a free Congo, amongst others and frequently in such a manner that they enjoyed “plausible deniability, as they didn’t do it directly.
Nowadays, the CIA outsources torture, taking hostages to the “black sites”, i.e. clandestine prisons to be tortured, so far away that the CIA has “plausible deniability”, though nowadays we all know that they did in fact do that. In fact, there is a 6,700 page report from the US Senate that details it. To date, only the Executive Summary has been published.[3] If they are capable of setting up an outsourced torture bureaucracy, well, murdering an opposition member every now and then, in Putin like style, is not that much. In fact, there is a US Senate report that details the various attempts by the CIA to murder those opposed to the US, amongst them Lumumba and Castro.[4] That stopped watch told the time and no one doubts they continue to murder.
Trump has once again told the correct time and the liberals denounce him for stating out loud what is an open secret. They all complain, correctly, about Elon Musk’s influence on the government. But the difference between Musk and previous governments is one of style. Musk struts around and publicly boasts about what he is doing. But were those who financed both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party in the past any different? Well, they did not publicly boast about how they were going to rob the exchequer or change laws to favour their interests, but that is exactly what they did. The financing of election campaigns in the US is anything but transparent, it is very opaque and has always been so, though the US Supreme Court decision in 2010 made matters worse, opening up the legal possibility for dark money to enter election campaigns.[5] Large corporations have always played a key role, and if Elon Musk financed Trump, Bill Gates financed Harris. The idea that the large businesspeople of the US donate money without asking for anything in exchange requires an unapparelled level of naivety or stupidity in the history of humanity. What distinguishes Musk from the banks and other companies that financed both the Reprobates and the DemoRats is that he publicly boasts that he bought a president. What distinguishes the US campaigns from the rest of the world is that the entry of dirty money is almost legal and as it is the US there is no chance of a Proceso 8000 against the President as happened in Colombia with Samper.[6] However, without wishing to defend Samper, the Yanks who accused him receiving narco funds were bigger narcos than he ever was.
Once more, liberals were rightly outraged when Trump proposed expelling all Palestinians from Gaza and speculating with the land to build beachfront properties. The proposal to expel them to the Sinai is not new. As Jonathan Cook has pointed out they have been talking about this since, at least, 2015, i.e. in the Obama government.[7] In March 2024, Trump’s son in law Jared Kushner once again put it forward.[8] But during the Genocide, Biden armed Israel whilst they themselves said they were going to empty out Gaza and in the USA and Israel real estate companies called on clients to invest in a future with real estate in Gaza. Two months after the beginning of the Genocide, an Israeli company, Harey Zahav, launched a sales campaign under the slogan “Wake up, a beach house is not a dream!” They included in their ads reservists in Gaza and even statements from the CEO filmed in the heart of Gaza.[9] A year later in October 2024, Israeli settlers held a real estate event to coincide with the religious festival Sukkot marking the “exodus” of Jews from Egypt. They demanded the forced displacement of all Palestinians in order to colonise the zone with Zionists.[10] Trump’s plan has always been that of the Zionists, and Biden’s response was to provide them with all the necessary bombs to pave the way for the project. In that, Biden counted on the support of the DemoRats at all times. At no stage did he speak out against the expulsion of Palestinians.
Outside the US, the image that many have of the “progressive” DemoRats is encapsulated in the figure of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. She never broke with Biden on the Genocide. She supported him as a presidential candidate and opposed those who asked for him to renounce his candidature.[11] It was not surprising. AOC refused to vote against a proposal to concede an additional billion dollars to Israel’s Iron Dome and then half-heartedly apologized.[12] I say half-heartedly as at the beginning of the Genocide she stated she no longer had any reservations about financing the “defence” of Israel and when she was asked about the refugees from Gaza, she did not oppose their expulsion but rather said that the Arab countries should accept refugees from Gaza.
Now the stopped liberal watch tells the correct time when they denounce Trump’s plans. But it told the wrong time under the Biden and Obama governments. And liberals never learn. In the midst of a genocide, there are those who believe that identity politics which did such harm is the route to go down. In the midst of a public assault on the exchequer, a full-frontal attack on the working class, a plan to commit war crimes against the Palestinians, there are those who want to continue with identitarian issues. For some, the big issue is that rapists who later identified as women and were transferred to women’s prisons under Biden now have to return to male prisons under Trump. They believe that this is what is going to galvanise the opposition. They would be better off throwing that stopped watch away and looking at a sundial, to see how their lukewarm and often wrong answers to the reactionary policies of US governments, whether they are Reprobates or DemoRats cast a shadow.
If a political group’s watch only tells the right time twice a day, it is of no use. The Palestinians have many enemies, amongst them Trump, but also Biden and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, and if the watch of the liberals and some left sectors that claim to be Marxist does not tell the right time regarding these personalities, then neither they nor their watches are of use. There is no room for the tepid.
References
[1] CNN (14/02/2025) Trump officials fired nuclear staff not realizing they oversee the country’s weapons stockpile, sources say.
[2] CNN (06/02/2017) Trump defends Putin: ‘You think our country’s so innocent. Sophie Tatum.
[3] See REPORT of the SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE STUDY of the CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY’S DETENTION AND INTERROGATION PROGRAM .
[4] Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders. An Interim Report. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94465.pdf
[5] BCJ (14/01/2025) Fifteen Years Later, Citizens United Defined the 2024 Election. Marina Pino y Julia Fishman.
[6] The Proceso 8000 was an investigation about the entry of narco funds to Ernesto Samper’s campaign, which happened, but he defended himself with the infamous statement that “it was all behind my back.”
[7] MEE (13/02/2015) Is there a plan to force Palestinians into Sinai? Jonathan Cook.
[8] The Guardian (19/023/2024) Jared Kushner says Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable. Patrick Wintour.
[9] Al Jazeera (19/12/2023) Israeli real estate firm pushes settlement building in Gaza.
[10] MEE (22/10/2024) As Gaza burns, Israeli settlers make ‘real estate’ plans. Peter Osborne and Lubna Masarwa.
[11] Axios (21/07/2024) AOC holds first 2024 rally for Biden as progressives rage over Gaza. Andrew Solender.
[12] AOC (n/d) A Note from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
⏩ Gearóid Ó Loingsigh is a political and human rights activist with extensive experience in Latin America.
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