Trump’s golden bullet: Portend of an apocalypse?
DONALD TRUMP assassination attempt France UK elections Republicans Democrats MAGA #auspol UK Keir Starmer Labour USA France President Emmanuel Macron New Popular Front Jean-Luc Martin Hirst
Martin Hirst
A surprising Left victory in France, the end of a Tory dynasty in England, plots to get a sitting U.S. president to step down and an attempt on Donald Trump’s life — a lot has happened in 14 days....
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Independent Australia
A lot has happened in the space of 14 days — from a surprising Left victory in France, the end of a Tory dynasty in England, plots to get a sitting U.S. president to step out of a re-election campaign and an attempt on Donald Trump’s life. As Dr Marty Hirst explains, history sometimes moves at the speed of light.

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”

This observation is often attributed to Vladimir Lenin, but it may be apocryphal. Today that doesn’t matter; what matters is that this has been one of those weeks. There have been political seismic shifts across Europe and North America. The tectonic plates of the normative social order are grinding and rattling against each other and the tsunami warning bells are binging loudly in the fog.

The loudest alarms are sounding from sea to shining sea, all the way across the United States, or as I like to call it, AmeriKKKa. On Sunday morning, Australia woke to the news that Donald Trump had survived an assassination attempt with only a slight nick to his right ear. It was a shocking – if unsurprising – end to a fortnight of Sturm und Drang.

We cannot see the future but we can see the signs that at least point towards some looming and catastrophic upheaval. Is this the calm before the storm? I don’t know, but I am catching my breath and stuffing the essentials into my bug-out bag. Just in case…

If we rewind to the beginning of this apocalyptic timeline perhaps we can get a better sense of what might be coming. Let’s ignore Trump for a moment and start on the other side of the Atlantic in the birthplace of European revolution, France.

La révolution pourrait être télévisée

The first big shock wave was the second round of voting in the French general election on 7 July. The polls and pundits were predicting an easy win for the Fascist nepo baby Marine Le Pen and her brownshirts. The first round of voting on 30 June showed Le Pen’s gang enjoying a comfortable lead. Then, literally out of left field, a popular movement arose to block the fascists at the ballot box. The result was extraordinary.

The dust has not yet settled and President Macron has not appointed a new Prime Minister, but the Left and centre-Left parties could form a coalition. By the same token, Macron may feel that an alliance with Le Pen’s fascists would be better for him.

It is a dark, smelly stain on the U.S. news media that all of its limited attention bandwidth is now taken up with lauding Trump’s magic bullet miracle, instead of warning...the world about the looming nightmare of a second Trump term.

Tory in a red tie

Just across the Channel, the British public was also in a punishing mood as they headed to the polls on 4 July. The result was a thumping victory for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party and a wipeout for the Tories.

After 14 years of the most disaster-struck clusterfuck of a Tory government in post-war history, it was inevitable that the ghost of Labour-past in a Saville Row suit, €1000 glasses and a red Hermes tie would ride a crimson tide to a 200-seat majority.

That’s basically how it played out — Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who now supports genocide, led the Labor Party to a huge win. The Greens picked up three more seats, Nigel Farage and Reform UK got a pasting and pro-Palestine Independents also grabbed a couple of spots, the Scottish National Party lost 39 seats.

The obliteration of the Tories is good news, but the electorate at large did not seem to be too excited about what it had just done. Only 60 per cent of eligible Britons voted; it was the lowest overall turnout in British electoral history.

I think that for many UK voters, the result was akin to the excitement of a new pair of shoes and then realising that you used them to walk dogshit all over grandma’s carpet.

Trump wins the golden ticket

The 13 July (U.S. time) attempt on Trump’s life, mid-rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, was a serious one. Trump was just very lucky. Only a few centimetres to the right and the sniper’s bullet would have ripped his head in two.

Trump emerged unscathed, triumphant and defiant in a phalanx of Secret Service officers forming a Praetorian Guard around the slightly wounded candidate. The iconic photo of that moment has all but guaranteed him the presidency.

This week, Trump is attending the Republican convention in Milwaukee and he will bask in the glory of the moment. He will blather incoherently about god being on his side and the illiterate MAGA crowd will lap it up.

All sorts of stupid conspiracy theories are now in play, including the ridiculous lie that the Democratic Party is somehow responsible for the attack.

Every sane and sensible reason that Trump is unfit to be president of the United States will just fall into the memory hole with the help of a media pack so jacked up on its own supply that it cannot respond in a sober way to the unfolding trainwreck that is AmeriKKKan politics today.

Shufflin’ Joe: dead man walking

Trump has now sucked all the oxygen out of Biden’s failing campaign. Shufflin’ Joe is now a dead man walking. For two weeks now, pressure has been mounting on Joe Biden to recuse himself from the Democratic Party nomination to stand for re-election. Now it doesn’t matter.

After a dismal performance in the first live debate of the presidential election season – "Real deadbeat dads of Washington, Series 3" – the Democratic Party machine and the liberal media started a “Joe must go,” war chant.

I’d be fine with that if the reason was that the political establishment had finally woken up to Genocide Joe’s unwavering support for Netanyahu. Unfortunately, that’s not what is happening.

Instead, what we’ve been privileged to witness is an undignified pile-on targeting Biden’s age, escalating senility and his inability to even know which state of the union he is standing in.

It’s undignified because it has drawn all the media attention and it’s sucked the oxygen out of legitimate scrutiny of Trump. To be honest, I don’t think it matters now. Trump will be the next U.S. president and that is a frightening prospect for the entire world.

I’m sure you’ve heard of Project 2025 — it is a blueprint for fascism via the ballot box. Trump has signalled that his administration will go after everybody except White Christian nationalists. There will be blood as AmeriKKKa descends into a Christo-Fascist hell. Putin will be unleashed in Ukraine; Netanyahu will continue the slaughter in Gaza, and more bad shit will happen everywhere all at once and all the time.

I’m not a “lesser evil” voter and I think the United States empire will continue to decline whomever is elected on 5 November, but I do think it is a dark, smelly stain on the American news media that all of its limited attention bandwidth is now taken up with lauding Trump’s magic bullet miracle, instead of warning Americans and the world about the looming nightmare of a second Trump term.

What to make of all this?

The shameless hypocrisy of world leaders, public figures and idiot columnists everywhere piously intoning there’s “no place for political violence” while turning their faces away from the genocide in Gaza leaves a rotten taste in my mouth.

I curse them all, loudly, bitterly, and with all my soul.

Maybe we can take some comfort from the French election result but it is perhaps too early to celebrate. The Left’s putative leader Jean Luc Melenchon has promised to recognise the state of Palestine if he’s appointed PM.

However, history tells us that when push comes to shove, the centrist reformers will push out the Left and embrace their natural allies on the centre-right. The only certainty in the result is more uncertainty. However, after two years of upheaval on the streets, the French masses are not finished.

The British result is a very mixed bag. Keir Starmer is a Tory in a red tie. On the other hand, Jeremy Corbyn and a handful of independent pro-Palestine candidates managed to win in local constituency battles.

I don’t know if Corbyn will emerge as a potential pole of left-wing organising in the UK. The last time he did, it was Starmer and the Labour machine – funded by the Zionist lobby – that brought him down with false accusations of antisemitism.

This time it is different. Progressives can be anti-Zionist and confident that we are not being antisemitic.

Of course, the largest of the known unknowns is what will happen in the belly of the beast.

The American empire has ruled the world for over a century, but it’s an empire staggering and stumbling, just like its current and future president. The U.S. Empire’s longevity has been propped up by a false consensus at home. Americans used to unanimously believe they lived in the greatest country on earth. Now those same citizens are tearing the nation down from within.

We will know soon enough if Biden can be propped up long enough to shuffle to the final run-off with the Mandarin Mussolini in November, but we won’t know until then if America or AmeriKKKa will emerge from the ballot box.

Either way, the march of history will accelerate once again.

Dr Martin Hirst is a journalist, author and academic. You can follow him on Twitter @ethicalmartini.

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