The Ultimate Blowback from U.S. Foreign Policy? Donald Trump.
By Walden Bello | ( Foreign Policy in Focus ) |
How the CIA, bad trade deals, and wanton military intervention caused the social crises that gave us the Donald. (Really.)
When the late Chalmers Johnson introduced the word
blowback to describe the adverse consequences of Washingtons actions in the world, he wasnt referring simply to the victims of U.S. imperial interventions striking back on American soil. More importantly, he saw the resulting destabilization of the American democratic process as the most dangerous blowback of all.
Seen in this light, Donald Trumps M&Ms campaign which relies heavily on broadsides against Mexicans and Muslims is unquestionably a disturbing blowback from Washingtons policies abroad.
Trump launched his campaign with a plan to build a wall along the nearly 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border while summarily deporting undocumented migrants and their families. After the San Bernardino shootings on December 2, in which a Muslim couple killed 14 people, Trump has pushed for the U.S. to stop accepting Muslim migrants and visitors to the United States.
These two proposals run directly against the U.S. self-image as a country of migrants, threatening to unleash a tide of hatred against Mexican-Americans and Muslims, and putting them on notice that their rights are fragile. Yet Trumps calls have resonated with large sectors of the Republican base, with extremist rhetoric now a staple not only of Trumps campaign but of his rivals as well.
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