Social stress is the prelude to war. disinformation, disillusionment, apathy, and pessimistic resignation blunt the electorate’s will to participate in democracY.

A corrupt Supreme Court. 

Judges who manipulate their power to protect Trump.

Threats against the legal system, public officials, and police.

Silicon Valley’s push to force the Fed to hold crypto.

These are all preludes to events that can spread nationwide. These events are happening now, and they may catch fire before the November 2024 election.

People have a vision of war as massive armies using the most lethal weapons and machinery blasting houses, buildings, and enemy positions in the lawless world of total war.  Soldiers and civilians die in great numbers.  The waste and utter destruction are apocalyptic.  Cities and towns become desolate and reduced to rubble.

But war and the people who led them changed over time.  Dictators and elected leaders can initially become less violent to meet their objectives, but they remain violent and threats to democracies.  In the words of authors Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman in their book Spin Doctors, dictators adapt to modern times as readily as war strategies change to defeat their enemies.

Dictators and war leaders look different today than 50 years ago.  They are wealthy and come from the corporate world.  They don’t wear uniforms.  But they are still surrounded by sycophants and educated people wearing the latest fashions.  However, their intent is the same as that of warmongers from the last century.  They want total control.  The physical destruction of their enemies is a byproduct of their power.

If this sounds familiar, it should.

The current rise of Trumpism in the Republican Party includes all of these cultural characteristics, which elevated them into membership, loyalty, and personal ownership badges.

When disinformation and chaos campaigns directed at Americans are conducted by biased and propaganda-based traditional and social media, these cultural bonds are strengthened into a solid chain.

The sources of the disinformation, money, and expertise to divide Americans into different cultural groups come from inside and outside the U.S.  These soft links are challenging to find. Still, investigators know they come from Russia, China, North Korea, and other nations that will benefit from a weakened U.S.

This new form of warfare is as accurate as military weapons and can have the same impact on a democracy. This new, soft form of warfare is ideally suited for the 21st century, where social media and its accompanying advanced technology rely on psychological warfare and dirty operations campaigns perfected from the World Wars of the 20^th Century. This warfare does not destroy property or ongoing business operations. It’s focused on the intangible: the freedoms without physical form.

In many ways, social media and its allies are akin to the neutron bomb, developed in 1958 that was hailed as a revolutionary weapon that could kill life without destroying buildings. Its inventor, Sam Cohen, said, “It’s the only nuclear weapon in history that makes sense in waging war.  When the war is over, the world is still intact,” he told the New York Times.

Today, the soft weapons used to destabilize society and raise concerns about the viability of democracy and faith in social institutions are:

• Social media. Many political outlets publish right-wing, unverified information and propaganda. These include Ticktock, Facebook, LinkedIn, 4chan, 8chan, Gab, BitChute, and Parler.
• Cable TV news outlets, programs, and other right-wing outlets include FOX, Newsmax, Washington Examiner, Epoch Times, and TheBlaze.
• Cryptocurrency. Despite its popularity, crypto has not replaced the dollar as a medium of exchange.  Instead, crypto is being used to destabilize central banks, launder money, evade taxes, serve as a placeholder for the expanding world of online sports betting, and produce short-term profits for naive investors.
• QAnon. No one knows who invented QAnon and crypto, which is extraordinary in a world where its inventors could be worth billions overnight.  This leads to speculation that both crypto and QAnon were invented by enemies of the U.S., such as Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea.  QAnon is the engine behind absurd conspiracies adopted by an unsuspecting target audience.
• Maga Republicans in Congress and state positions The political goals of this group are well known and include the right-wing dictatorial takeover of the U.S., as specified in their Project 25 Report, a Mein Kampf-type blueprint for a Trump election.
• Traditional cable TV news outlets, such as CNN and MSNBC, allow lies to be broadcast unchallenged by right-wing politicians. When this happens, the news presenters do not challenge the lies in real time.  This degrades the ethics of journalism.
• Cable news turns politics into entertainment for profit; cable news has used politicians as entertainers to get cheap programming without spending money on production. Trump fits this bill perfectly.  His rallies are one step above a WrestleMania show.  As a result, profit-center cable news outlets, including everyone, have embraced this new media format.  One estimate found that Trump got $4.96 billion in “free earned media in the year leading up to the presidential election, according to data from tracking firm mediaQuant.  He received $5.6 billion throughout his campaign, more than the combined number of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, and Marco Rubio.” Another group, Media Matters, “estimated that Fox News alone gave Trump almost $30 million of free airtime last year.  That figure was based on Trump’s interview time on the network and the cost of buying equivalent advertising time.”

How Do We Know We Are Now at War?

Civilian and military casualties are the dismal measures of war.  Total war is the destruction of cities and towns and innocent civilians.  But 21^st-century war is different.  The civilian casualties in this modern war are broken or impaired psychologically, morally, and ethically.

This may explain why many Americans dislike the government.  It may partially explain the need for violent anti-government acts, including the denial of an elected president assuming office.  It can account for the constant verbal and physical attacks against people deemed undesirable by the political leaders who have announced they will be tyrants.

A New Kind of Warfare

The weapons for the 21st-century War are different. They indeed involve the exponential lethality of the military-industrial complex. However, that may not be needed if there is an alternative to weakening an enemy and conquering their political administration.

The impact of disinformation, disillusionment, apathy, and pessimistic resignation blunt the electorate’s will to participate in democracy, which is just as lethal as a neutron bomb.

But how do you measure the impact of this disillusionment and disorientation campaign? Through numerous surveys of the American electorate.

While there are scores of reputable national surveys to choose from, the highly-regarded Pew Research Center found the following in a 2023 survey:

• Just 4% of U.S. adults say the U.S. political system is working extremely or very well; another 23% say it works somewhat well. About six-in-ten (63%) express little or no confidence in its future.
• Favorable views of many governmental and political institutions are at historic lows. Just 16% of the public say they trust the federal government always or most of the time.  While trust has hovered near historic lows for the better part of the last 20 years, today, it stands among the lowest levels dating back nearly seven decades.  More Americans have an unfavorable than favorable opinion of the Supreme Court – the first time that has occurred in polling going back to the late 1980s.
• A growing share of the public dislikes both political parties. Nearly three-in-ten (28%) express unfavorable views of both parties, the highest share in three decades of polling.  And a comparable share of adults (25%) do not feel well-represented by either.
• Candidate choices are underwhelming. As the presidential campaign heats up, 63% of Americans say they are dissatisfied with the emerging candidates.  There also has been a downward trend in views of the quality of all political candidates.  Just 26% rate the quality of political candidates as very or somewhat good, down about 20 percentage points since 2018.

Preparing for War

According to the book Preparation for Combat (Army University Press), “To be prepared for war, the unit must be tactically competent. Executing maneuvers and formations according to doctrine determines tactical competence.”

This “tactical competence,” using the methods already described, has been fully implemented for years.

In a classic 1993 article in Foreign Affairs, Samuel P. Huntington argues that conflict will not occur between nations on ideological or economic lines but among groups with common cultural values.  This can include values shared by religion, endorsement of political philosophy, family or group traditions, racial composition, and the roles of the sexes and family structure.

Social Stress as the Prelude to War

The prelude for any modern war is to destabilize the enemy.  It’s a classic war tactic.  Enemies of the U.S. have spent hundreds of billions to do this.  The enemies, both foreign and domestic, have been working together to do this daily using cyberattacks, identity thefts of individuals, a corrosive and willing U.S. media, corrupt politicians, launching conspiracy theories, and empowering a sociopath as a figurehead to lead the nation into a dictatorship.

America gets the leadership it deserves.

If the nation cannot or will not recognize these evident threats, it will suffer severe, damaging, surprising changes in its ways of life within a few years. If Americans want to experience negative surprises in their lifetimes, they can remain complacent and do nothing. Our enemies will take care of the rest.

Trump, crypto, and QAnon are the engines for disinformation, but who benefits from the chaos?

Given the long and twisted legal history, accompanied by Donald Trump’s questionable business practices, political commentators have repeatedly asked: How has Trump gotten away with flaunting the law for about 50 years?

This is a national mystery.  Most Americans know that if they tried a fraction of what Trump is accused of doing, they would have been convicted and jailed.  However, Trump has escaped jail for about five decades.  How does he do it?

Washington commentators don’t have an answer. They cannot say certain things publicly in the media because ethics and the law restrict the offering of unprovable theories.

Still, the average person knows something is amiss.  Is it because rich white men who are politically connected rarely get caught, tried, convicted, and sentenced?  Or, is Trump’s get-out-of-jail-free card the essential perk of a corrupt Manhattan society where everyone profits in some way from the spoils of corruption?

Or is it connected to one of the biggest mysteries of the last few decades, namely, that despite the unprecedented amount of knowledge and research capabilities available to billions of people via the Web, no one knows who invented crypto or who is behind QAnon?

This anonymity is astounding since the persons or groups responsible for these two global destabilizing currency and disinformation campaigns could make billions in royalties if they claimed credit for these inventions.  But no one has done so.  Maybe it’s because “state actors,” in the words of intelligence officials, are behind these creations.

Would China, state-sponsored criminal gangs, Russia, or North Korea benefit from crypto and QAnon disinformation?

Who gains when citizens of established democracies have populations who start distrusting their governments and institutions, the ultimate goals of crypto and disinformation?

The answer is simple: the world’s democracies.

According to presidential historian Lindsay Chevinsky, democratic countries are less likely to start a war with other democratic countries. If nations share the same political goals and institutions that give average citizens equal access to the political structure, they can make needed government changes via legislatures and voting. If chaos reigns in a democracy, its institutions fail to work, benefiting enemy nations intent on conquest.

Connecting the Dots of Chaos

For anyone who connects the dots, it looks like Trump, QAnon, and crypto are all part of the same spearhead to disrupt the U.S. democracy and replace it with the authoritarian plan Trump has already pubic announced.

Trump’s well-publicized actions to break the law are all linked to his attempts to damage democracy. Crypto and QAnon add fuel to the disorder.

“Trust in government increases compliance with a wide range of public policies, including public health responses, such as vaccinations, adherence to tax laws, political participation, social cohesiveness, and Confidence in institutional legitimacy, as pointed out by Maryland Daily Record columnist Robert Pawlicki.

In Pawlicki’s single list, we find the reasons why Trump and his enablers pushed a national anti-COVID vaccination policy, evaded taxes, challenged the IRS, U.S. Justice Department, judges, the top Pentagon leadership, Democrats and Republicans who opposed his policies, stigmatized minority groups, and challenged the entire national voting and president affirmation process.

This onslaught of government distrust and Trump’s well-publicized and constant legal-political drama has worn down Americans.  Tensions and distrust of government are high.

• “Just 20% say they trust the government in Washington to do the right thing just about always or most of the time – a sentiment that has changed very little since former President George W. Bush’s second term in office,” according to the Pew Research Center.
• A 2021 survey by Gallup found that “trust in the federal government’s handling of international problems has fallen nine percentage points since last year to a record-low 39%, and now matches the level of trust for its handling of domestic problems — one of only a few times that has occurred.”
• The same Gallup survey said, “Confidence in the three branches of the federal government is low on a relative basis. Although a 54% majority of U.S. adults trust the judicial branch, this is down 13 points compared with 2020.”
• The ethical problems of some Supreme Court judges have fueled questions about the pay-to-play behavior of the nation’s top judges. This possibly unethical behavior “indicates a larger political trend — the declining trust and confidence in U.S. institutions writ large coupled with Democrats’ exasperation on a host of perceived political injustices,” according to National Public Radio.

And what happens to why Americans distrust their government’s ability to solve problems?

They search for political pretenders who come forward with false promises of being able to provide more light on the other side of the hill.  This includes Evangelical Christians, who are told that they will not be able to practice their religion in the future and fall into this group.  People who are afraid that an immigrant horde is coming to take their jobs.  Minorities who have been victimized by income inequality for generations but are promised a new beginning.  People who are told that Democrats are socialists or communists join in.

But many other Americans don’t have the energy and motive to buy into these false promises and disinformation.  This may explain why suicide rates have increased.  In 2021, the rate increased by 4% to 14.1, the most significant one-year increase since 2001, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

So, how did Trump get away without being held unaccountable for his misdemeanors and felonies over the past 50 years?  If we have to pick a starting point, we can arguably mark it as when he met his despicable lawyer and mentor, Roy Cohen.

Trump and His Despicable Lawyer

One of Trump’s earliest mentors, whom he met as he accumulated widespread notoriety in Manhattan, which has its grey criminal civilization, was the lawyer Roy Cohn (1927-1986).

Cohn was the closest homosexual who gained fame as the legal advisor to the infamous Senator Joseph McCarthy during the anti-communist hearings in the spring of 1954.  Cohn then became the lawyer of gangsters and shady white-collar executives while socializing with celebrities.  Cohn also mentored Trump on how to evade the law, stonewall the courts, play the media, feed the naïve public favorable stories of his exploits, and chisel contractors and other vendors.

Cohen knew the court system’s legal, political, and social mechanics and how they could be gamed to benefit Trump.  Cohen advised Trump and watched him enter Manhattan business and social society like a human cancer cell.

This part of the story is well known, and it continues to play out today, about 50 years after Trump implemented Cohen’s plan to capitalize on a perverted Manhattan society, one that values superficiality, access to money (real or illusionary), societal status, materialism, bribery, and willing media manipulation.

This sick scenario is the standard engine, and money keeps it going as the world’s oldest perpetual motion machine. This is where Trump, QAnon, and cryptocurrency show their commonalities.

The Crypto Perpetual Sucker Machine

The best example of the duplicity and hypocrisy of crypto and Trump comes from a quote from Jamie Dimon, the chairman of Citibank’s $1.71 billion bank and investment firm.

Dimon is regularly called upon to provide opinions on the economy, political developments, and Fed policy.  Dimon responded honestly when asked about the prospects for crypto and its role in contemporary finance.

“Today, many households are entrusting their hard-earned savings to digital coins.  JPMorgan Chase, for example, is increasing its clients’ access to crypto funds, even as the CEO, Jamie Dimon, describes bitcoin as “worthless.”  

In this answer, Dimon says crypto investments are “worthless,” even as a department in his investment firm sells crypto to investors a few floors below Dimon’s executive offices at the fastest possible speed. 

This hypocrisy is profitable.  It is the same hypocrisy that has powered Trump’s rise, with the addition of Trump’s ringmaster antics, his racism, and crude jokes about anyone that threatens to pierce his thin veil of being a rational and savvy businessman.

Dimon, an exceptional business leader, should not be placed in the same space as Trump.  Dimon is the exact opposite of Trump.  But I use Dinon’s honest and accurate answer about crypto as a worthless investment to make another point.

Both Trump and crypto have the same purpose: both are designed to weaken the existing trust in established institutions. Crypto wants to undermine central banks worldwide, while Trump wants to undermine U.S. courts, their supporting legal system, and legislative bodies.

Trump and crypto have no problem laundering money and evading taxes.  Trump and crypto have no problem serving as conduits for facilitating and being used for illicit international cash flows.

Trump and crypto have no problem deceiving average voters and investors that there is some potential value to investing in their political and monetary futures.  Both Trump and crypto are two versions of Ponzi schemes, the old system in which new voters and investors are needed to prop up the voters, investors, and Trump supporters who have been sucked into his vortex in the January 6 insurrection attempt or who were convicted and sentenced for crimes done at Trump’s urging.

It’s not a bad record for Trump and crypto.  Both are dangerous to essential institutions in organized modern societies, institutions, and democracies.  The obvious problem is that both go unchecked.

Citibank and other investment firms offer crypto as a direct investment or in ETFs, even as most highly qualified professionals have shown that crypto is a Ponzi scheme and not an asset class.

The term “asset class” was fabricated to attract institutional money, and that money is supposed to be managed by more sophisticated and critical portfolio managers.  But educated people fall into the trap in the smoke and haze of the crypto and Trump hype.  Their boards of directors can ask why the fund is not invested in crypto, and to this, many timid managers will not say it is a roulette wheel-type bet but may say, “We’ll look into it.”

This is the same response educated voters say when they ask about Trump’s 90-plus indictments, convictions for rape, defamation, and other pending criminal actions, These educated people will not hire a man like Trump to be their dog walker.  Still, they would consider him a viable president.

The Media Enablers

Trump and crypto also have another nefarious common denominator: broadcast and social media. Trump was the darling of the Manhattan tabloid press. He dated beautiful models, had a swinging bachelorhood in the swinging ’60s and ’70s, and made sexist comments. All this made Trump quotable and photogenic.

When Trump announced he could build parts of decaying Manhattan faster and cheaper than city government, he became a populist hero who showed that civic government was untrustworthy, ineffective, and bloated.  Crypto is also used by people who want to bypass traditional channels to avoid taxes or accountability.  “One study found that around one in four bitcoin users and 46% of bitcoin transactions are associated with illegal activity.  This adds up to $76 billion in shady transactions.” Yes, that $76 billion.

The media and Trump also engaged in a symbiotic relationship to make big money.  When the NBC network signed Trump to be in The Apprentice, a “reality talent game show” aired from 2004 to 2017, it falsely promoted Trump’s business savvy.  In the process, it also perpetuated one of the most unethical journalistic frauds in history.

Any superficial investigation would have shown that Trump was a paper tiger in the business world and had numerous lawsuits pending against him when the show was being produced.

But the network didn’t care.  They mixed fiction and showmanship to create a false titan of industry to propel the illusion of capitalism that rich people are always the most intelligent people in the room.  This fallacy has persisted since the Robber Baron days of the 19^th century.

After The Apprentice, Trump saw that he could easily manipulate the media.  In this 2016 presidential campaign, the cable network gave Trump millions in free air time as they anxiously waited for hours for his leased jet to land and his wrestling promoter-style tarmac address.

One estimate found that Trump got $4.96 billion in “free earned media in the year leading up to the presidential election, according to data from tracking firm mediaQuant.  He received $5.6 billion throughout his campaign, more than the combined number of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio.”

Another group, Media Matters, “estimated that Fox News alone gave Trump almost $30 million of free airtime last year.  That figure was based on Trump’s interview time on the network and the cost of buying equivalent advertising time.”

Why did this happen?  The media judged that Trump was viewed more as entertainment, or at best, a 21^st-century Frankenstein posing as a buffoon political entertainer, a new type of creature that has never existed in any media advertising model.

Trump was an incarnation of the best TV promoters, such as Ron Popiel, the ShamWow guy, Billy Mays, and George Forman. 

The big difference was that Trump was selling the hottest political messages of the day, such as anti-immigration, anti-abortion, attacks on Christianity, the Replacement Theory, an impending invasion of immigrants from Mexico, and the old message of fear, imminent financial ruin, and uncontrolled crime. He also had an enabler: QAnon, an oddball source of sensational, dumb conspiracies, which first appeared in October 2017.

Crypto’s Anti-Establishment Message

While certainly not as well-developed as Trump’s messages of doom and invasion, crypto is also understood to be an anti-establishment currency.

Crypto is propped up by some greedy financial web and print outlets who report daily on events in the crypto world of non-fungible tokens.  There are new products and the inevitable debacle of failed crypto scandals (FTX, Mt Gox, Bitcoin Savings and Trust, Moopay, BitInstant, and Binance).  I wrote articles for websites that fueled some of these paid crypto endorsements because firms selling or trading crypto paid for links to pro-crypto articles.

This pay-to-play editorial model is the basis for many websites with headlines such as “The Top 5 Crypto Bets for 2024” or “7 Things You Must Know About Bitcoin Before You Invest.” These are often boilerplate articles, but they generate the money to pay freelancers who know the investment is a scam.

Lobbyists and Political Enablers

Crypto and Trump are also propped up because they have millions to pay lawyers (Trump) and lobbyists (the crypto industry) to promote their false stories in Washington, DC, and state legislatures.  Crypto lobbyists spent $21.6 million in 2022, according to OpenSecrets, with lobbying money coming from 56 firms in 2022.

Top Senators (former and current) have accepted crypto lobbying money or served as lobbyists for the industry without knowing how crypto or blockchain works.  This includes former Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), Former Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.),  Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), Rep. Ron Klein (D-Fla.), Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) and Rep. Phil English (R-Pa.).  Open Secrets reported that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s s-aligned super-PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, “received $1 million from Bankman-Fried just days before FTX declared bankruptcy.”  Knowing the facts makes no difference in much of Congress, but lobbying money talks, and that’s all that matters.

When the SEC and CFTC want to enact regulations regarding crypto trading or new products, the senators and Representatives are alerted that a rule is in the pipeline that must be opposed to keep the lobbying money flowing.  Similarly, Trump’s enablers in Congress are warned when a federal or state investigation is moving along which could convict or derail the Trump presidential campaign.  In both cases, millions of dollars are involved, and the enablers are alerted to put on their shows if they want to get paid.

Get Rich Quick Schemes and Violence

The other commonality between Trump and crypto is that both have followers who want to get rich quickly as they violate the establishment.  Like their leader, some Trump followers bask in his lawlessness and flouting of standard societal norms, sexual behaviors, and financial obligations.

In the unregulated and global crypto world, flaunting the system involves illegal activities on and off the black market, or, as Tobias Sebastian Lim, CFA, puts it, “bad behavior tends to fester where capital is most unfettered.  One study found that around one in four Bitcoin users and 46% of Bitcoin transactions are associated with illegal activity.  This adds up to $76 billion in shady transactions.”

Anti-establishment behavior also includes violence.  Regarding the violence in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, a survey of 1,397 American voters by YouGov, a pollster, “found that more Republicans said they supported the actions of the pro-Trump extremists than opposed them (45% to 43% respectively).  In contrast, nearly every Democrat polled, and two out of three independents, said they opposed the rampage.”

E Pluribus Unum and the Three Horsemen of Chaos

This Latin phrase, E Pluribus Unum, is translated as “One out of many” or “One from many,” it is the traditional motto of the United States.  However, as QAnon, Trump, and crypto have become part of the tattered fabric of America, this slogan is no longer valid.  Distrust, suspicion, violence, and hate are now prevalent.  This may be the ultimate goal of the Three Horsemen of Disinformation.

After at least four years of funding the Trump administration and Republicans to the tune of over $100 million, the Republican Jewish Coalition is now admitting it made some mistakes.

The RJC now says it finds the comments of Congresswoman  Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.), a QAnon supporter and rabid Trump supporter, “indefensible and unacceptable”  after she said the Rothschilds were using a laser beam from space to start wildfires in California. The RJC said it had earlier supported her opponent in the Republican primary.

But in the vote to remove Greene from her committee assignments, she was supported by 199 Republican Congressmen, who effectively endorsed her QAnon positions. All, if not most of the 199 Republican Congressmen who supported Greene, received money from the RJC. As logic dictates, this means the RJC has a direct role in supporting a QAnon mouthpiece, despite their denials.

In another apology, the RJC said on January 7 that it condemned “the abhorrent mob attack” on the Capitol on January 6. It then congratulated Biden on winning the presidency and reiterated its primary goals of strengthening “the US-Israel relationship and preventing a nuclear Iran.”

What was missing from the RJC’s statement was that it did not address the role it played in financing Trump, who in turn invited the mob to the White House and may have had a role in planning the attack.

These are astounding admissions from the RJC, which is supposed to represent the wealthiest American Jews who espoused Trumpism and its inherent extreme right-wing policies during his entire presidency.

But there are significant omissions here.

Sheldon Adelson Made Some Big Losing Bets

The RJC and its wealthiest members continue to evade the apparent connection between its constantly escalating contributions to Trump and his Republican Party from 2016 to 2020, which parallels a corresponding increase in the number of violent anti-Semitic attacks nationwide, according to FBI and ADL statistics.

The RJC was largely shaped and driven by Sheldon Adelson, who died January 12, 2021, days after Trump’s defeat.  Adelson was the largest donor, $25 million, to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. He also was the largest individual donor to Republicans in the 2012 election at nearly $93 million.

Adelson was also the driving political, charismatic and financial force behind the RJC, which shaped its hard-right policies. Adelson’s policies effectively declared war on liberal pro-Israel groups that were not sufficiently opposed to any real or perceived intrusion against Israel from Palestinians and Iran.

Trump Was Called the “King of the Jews” by Evangelicals

One of the great examples of how the RJC and Adelson’s money was used by Republicans was the decision by the US State Department to move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in May 2018. At the time, this was heralded as a great victory for Adelson, the RJC, and his extravagant donations.

But that’s not the real story.

In an article in the Tablet by Shaul Magid, that move was done to appease the Evangelicals, not Adelson, his Israel nationalist supporters, or the Israeli government.

“It is no accident that evangelical John Hagee gave the invocation at the U.S. Embassy’s move to Jerusalem. As Trump said afterward, ‘I did this for the evangelicals.’ On one (Zionist) Christian reading, the Jews may think they are exercising their right of self-determination, but they are really pawns, paving the way for the return of Christ (including the predicted end-time destruction of those Jews who refuse to accept Christ).

“But (Jewish) Zionists don’t care, because for them it is the Christians who are the pawns in the story of their own heroic redemption. Each is conspiratorial in its own way. And they can do business together,” according to the Tablet article.  

This puts a new perspective on some of the events the Trump administration did in Israel for the supposed benefit of Adelson and the RJC.  In one instance, Evangelicals called Trump “the King of the Jews,” which should have alarmed most of Trump’s right-wing Jewish supporters.  But apparently, it had no impact on their blind support of Trump.

Adelson was a complex man who was simultaneously too charitable, tenacious, and aggressive.  His death probably won’t change the RJC’s direction.  His wife Miriam will see to that. She is a right-wing Israeli and now has the purse strings to fund Republicans, many of whom are increasingly right-wing Christian nationalists who are potentially violent, still believe Biden “stole” the election, and are prone to fringe conspiracies.  This sect also abhors compromise.

This will put the RJC in a corner. Should they financially support these groups if they give lip service to being pro-Israel?  Or, will the RJC realize their money is virtually funding groups who behind closed doors believe the Rothschilds are using laser beams to start fires?

The RJC is an Israel Nationalist Group

As a hard-core right-wing Republican political group focused on Israel and tax policies, the RJC does not publicly address domestic issues on its web site, aside from the containment of the COVID virus. This is no mistake.

It’s an omission that should be of interest to any Jewish political group with the word “Jewish” in its title. The reason is simple: the RJC is an American-based financial powerhouse that promotes Israeli nationalism.  It is not a political group that supports Jewish values. It does not tolerate liberal or non-Orthodox Judaism or any other pro-Israel group that even considers co-existence with the Palestinians or Iran.

In its mission statement, the RJC says it seeks to “foster and enhance ties between the American Jewish community and Republican decision-makers. We work to sensitize Republican leadership in government and the Party to the concerns and issues of the Jewish community while articulating and advocating Republican ideas and policies within the Jewish community.”

This means the RJC has two primary purposes: To promote “concerns and issues of the Jewish community” to Republicans in Congress and convert Jewish Democrats into becoming Republicans.

On both issues, the RJC is a failure.

The majority of American Jews are concerned about issues that exclude Trumpism. American Jews value social and humanitarian programs, social justice, fair taxation, unfettered access to voting, and environmentalism. These are issues that do not concern most Republicans.

Second, the RJC misses the historical fact that American Jews have been Democrats since the early 1900s. A 2019 Gallup poll found that about 60% of American Jews were Democrats. This pattern dates back to presidential elections since 1916, according to the Jewish Virtual Library.

So, where does that leave the RJC and its very limited mission statement?

The RJC is a political-social club for some of the nation’s wealthiest Republicans who happen to be Jewish. While they are predominantly a pro-Israel at-any-cost organization, and on that issue alone, the RJC would have a following in the national Jewish community.

But after that, the RJC’s rabid advocacy for Republican policies—anti-immigration, boosting the military budget, limited taxation on the wealthiest Americans, reducing or eliminating social programs–don’t reflect any 20^th Century Jewish values, aside from those held in extreme Orthodox, rabidly pro-Israel segments of the Jewish community.

This is why the RJC did not respond to this statement from the Jewish Democratic Council of America in 2019, which (referring to Trump) said: “And most prescient, the biggest threat to the security of American Jews today is, incredibly, the president of the United States.”

Rabid, pro-Trump Jews were also active on a few Facebook groups immediately before the 2020 election. On these groups, Republican Jews attacked anyone who was a Democrat. They were called “traitors,” “fake Jews,” “libtards” and other slurs used mainly on FOX news. They also falsely claimed that most American Jews were Republicans, a demonstrably false claim but was an attempt to sow disinformation.

The RJC Is an Extremist Organization

What will the RJC look like in the Biden presidency?

First and foremost, the RJC is an unrepentant Republican organization. Their prime concern is promoting Israel and limiting Iran’s influence. (Sheldon Adelson paid for the new AIPAC headquarters in Washington DC.) The RJC has no interest in advocating for domestic social programs, reforms of Trump-era executive orders, including its preferential tax laws and loopholes that only apply to the wealthiest Americans. These priorities will not change.

If the public applies pressure to the RJC, they could be forced to omit the word “Jewish” from their organization’s name. Their goals and values are wildly out of touch with most American Jews, most of whom will bear the brunt of any anti-Semitic attacks in the years ahead.

Public pressure will also force the RJC to make more public apologies for the upcoming slew of anti-Democratic, fringe Republicans who will be named in forthcoming investigations into the Trump administration and the attack on the Capitol.

Synagogues should also ask the RJC to pay for the added security costs they now must pay to protect their facilities and congregants from anti-Semitic threats and possible attacks.

Lastly and most importantly, some intrepid Jewish leaders should come forward to address this schism between the RJC, its wealthy members, and the larger community of average American Jews, who are predominantly Democrats.  This makes the RJC very different from almost all other Jewish groups formed to apply Jewish values to addressing social inequities while also supporting Israel.

Essentially, the RJC has put a wedge between itself and other Jewish groups it considers liberal. In 2019, Adelson sued the liberal, pro-Israel group, the National Jewish Democratic Council, and effectively put it out of business in a legal dispute. Adelson also belittled President Obama in 2012 when he called him “a crybaby.”

As a very wealthy, self-made intelligent man and a force of personality, Adelson was unquestionably one of the most generous donors to Jewish and Israeli social, medical, educational, and humanitarian causes in history. He was the main organizer and funder of Birthright Israel, which has sent thousands of high school and college students to Israel for an educational and cultural experience.

His conservative pro-Israel nationalist policies also coincided with the rise of Trump. The two had little in common, except Trump probably admired him as a successful casino operator (Trump was not), who was much wealthier.

But Trump’s advisors saw that the RJC and Adelson focused on Israel, which played well with the Evangelicals and Christian nationalists. In Trump, Adelson saw a man he could do business with (aka bribe) with huge donations in exchange for pushing pro-Israel policies.  And to Adelson’s and the RJC’s credit, this worked.

But as we all saw, Trump was an empty, unethical political vessel. His mental instability meant carnival fringe elements of the Republican Party now had access to the Oval Office. The RJC’s open checkbook should have noticed they were funding increasingly right-wing bottom feeders or Trump idolaters. Still, the egos or weak oversight by the RJC now meant their money was building the extreme right-wing infrastructure we see today.

Trump is now gone, and so is Sheldon Adelson, but the mess they created will take years to clean up.

The RJC in Post-Adelson World

In the interim, most liberal American Jews who are Democrats, and especially the leaders of national Jewish organizations, will have to acknowledge the damage caused in this dark period.

It’s unconscionable that the nation’s largest Jewish organizations are continually fundraising for money to fight anti-Semitism when the RJC is funding to some degree. Many of these same groups are encouraged to conduct anti-Semitic attacks and advocate for Christian nationalist messages.

The RJC should recognize that as a group that promotes a hard-core nationalist link with Israel, it has something perversely in common with the Christian nationalists in Trump’s orbit. However, history has demonstrably shown this is a situation that does not end well with Jews.

However, confronting the RJC is organizationally and politically sensitive since most RJC members are also significant contributors to national Jewish groups. As a result, these top execs don’t want to offend substantial donors. Money, after all, is money, regardless of its source.

Still, the RJC must be held accountable for allowing Trump to become president. Worse, it must take responsibility for its costly and failed attempt to push the sociopath Trump into a second term, even as it became clear he had a right-wing plan that was not hospitable to average Americans.