STEVEN MILLER: PROTECTOR OF THE IRON LAWS OF THE WORLD

“We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.”  “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

These are the words of the President’s top death eater and teacher’s pet Stephen Miller as justification for the US forcible capture of Venezuelan oil reserves.  It is the most concise statement of this regime’s philosophy as I’ve heard.

Mr. Miller, of course, is the prime architect of our national crusade against immigrants, legal or not, our unprecedented build-up of ICE agents to round them up, our construction of mass detention centers to store them, and of the regime’s use of US military personnel in American streets.  

One can say a lot about Mr. Miller, including his longstanding contempt for immigrants apparently dating back to high school, his dead eyes, and his rise to prominence in the Trump administration fueled by his pathological hatred of people who don’t look like him. One can also point out the irony of that statement coming from a guy who looks like his head was forced to the depths of many sand boxes and school lockers in his day.  But I want to focus on his most recent statement to CNN regarding the “iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

He's right.  One can survey the course of recorded human history and reasonably conclude that dominance by physical force is the default human condition.  This is not a new observation.  The philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote of the human “state of nature” which he famously described as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”, resulting in a “war of all against all”.   More recently, Bill Barr, one of Trump’s Attorney Generals in his first term, remarked that “history is written by the winners. So, it largely depends on who’s writing the history.”   It is not a coincidence that as soon as Robert Mueller published his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and Trump’s obstruction of justice, Barr spent his weekend mischaracterizing the report’s findings to protect Trump.  After all, history is written by the winners.

The Founders read Hobbes and other Enlightenment thinkers. They were aware of the “state of nature”. They were so concerned about it that they drafted the Constitution to protect us from its most extreme excesses because, in James Madison’s words in Federalist No. 10, “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” 

Among other things, the Constitution serves as a bulwark against the powerful dominating the weak. It contains separation of powers between the branches of government and the federal government and the states. It protects individual rights.  It was written to protect against the abuses of monarchy. It rejects the notion of a king.  As flawed as this country has been, and for as much as it has failed to live up to its greatest promises, for 250 years the American tradition has been to protect the weak against the strong and the minority against the majority.

The current regime intentionally tossed this tradition aside in favor of reclaiming the “state of nature” for themselves.   It is not merely a lust for power, but for domination.  They will do what they want, take what they want, and punish who they want because they can.  

The irony is that the American power that pipsqueaks like Miller are squandering was accumulated because of all the things the regime purports to hate: democracy, opportunity, equality, sacrifice, and rule of law. They do not believe in fundamental American values.  Instead, they are tribal.  And they intend to govern first and foremost by force.  They deem anyone who does not bow to their will worthy of punishment, degradation, and pain.  Obviously, this now extends to how the US treats other sovereign nations.

Listening to the contemptuous remarks of Miller, delivered to CNN with his trademark scorn and lack of emotional regulation, it seems as though nothing of value in this country was achieved prior to 2016.  It’s as if we only started being a powerful country after Trump was elected the first time.  The opposite is true. While the US was accumulating power to become the richest nation in the world after World War II, Trump was dodging drafts and cheating on taxes and Miller, presumably, was picking wings off flies. Yet they’ve commandeered the enormous power of the state for themselves as if they earned the right to threaten, to bully, to punish, and of course to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.

Apparently, next on the “We take what we want” list of foreign countries for us to “run” is Greenland. And given the enormous power of the US accumulated with no help from the damaged souls currently running our country, they are likely to succeed.