Drain the Swamp: Trump’s team likely defines it differently than you and I

Amid the unending miasma that is really @RealDonaldTrump and the 21st century GOP, the ever-present drive and need to ‘fill in the blank’ as to Trumpian rhetoric worsens the situation.  As an example, do you remember any journalist — debate or otherwise — driving for a coherent #MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) definition? Any Trump or Pence speech laying out exactly what it means?  Honestly, we ‘all’ have a thought of what that slogan means (or doesn’t) but it isn’t as if it was or is clearly defined.

This seems to be true across a wide range of issues, where Trump’s episodic connection to reality, facts, and (ever so rarely) truth have left us with a need to fill-in-the-gaps in so many ways.

Such is the case with “Drain the Swamp”.  In a Business Insider article supposedly defining what Trump meant by ‘DTS’, and failing to define it, we have this

Trump likely drew his inspiration for the phrase from President Ronald Reagan. In 1980, Reagan called to “drain the swamp” of bureaucracy in Washington, and created the Grace Commission, which identified $424 billion of wasteful government spending that could be cut.

“Likely …”  And, well, evidently DTS means not having lobbyists running government (right!), reducing conflicts of interest (right!), and cutting government waste, fraud, and abuse (right!).  In other words, assumptions about Trump’s DTS are, well, things that are assumed.

Remember the old saying about assumptions?

To assume is to make an ASS out of U and ME.

As to Drain the Swamp, the definition might be radically different than what most Americans assume — and in line with the neo-Nazi alt-right Trump base.

Alexander Dugin, who might be best described as Vladimir Putin’s Steve Bannon (one of Dugin’s is nicknames: Putin’s Brain.  Trump is, of course, #PutinsPuppet which leads us to this conclusion about Dugin-Trump:

Dugin has a chapter on “Swamp and Fire”.  Well, again, scary reading …

the Swamp is an ideology—Liberalism. … Let us close this page of history.

WE aren’t talking about corruption or ethics, but a core to the very sort of societal structure and basis that most people in the ‘Western’ world ascribe to …

the Swamp is a special post-modernist culture. … To drain it signifies restoring the Apollonian unit of art.

Dugin also attacks “post-modernist culture” and asserts that “art should return to holism”. For a quick perspective, this reads almost verbatim from Nazi attacks on modern art in the 1930s.

Among Hitler’s grand plans upon coming to power as chancellor in 1933 was to purify German culture, to promote the Apollonian “classical” and eradicate the uncontrollably Dionysian “primitive,” a category that included, along with the mentally and physically deformed, avant-garde modernism, Bolshevism, and Jewish culture.

Of course, Dugin doesn’t stop there.

it is transnational global capitalism. This is the material motor of the Swamp. It is loans and the Federal Reserve System printing poisonous green bills. … end all of this and return to the real productive sector and mercantilist approach.

Manufacturing and mercantilist trade wars are core to Dugin’s call to “Drain the Swamp”.

Most Americans perceive “Drain the Swamp” (whether they actually think Trump has any actual intent to do so or not …) as some form of call for ethics in the Federal Government — to reduce lobbyist influence, cut contractor abuse and wasteful spending, to reduce unethical behavior, etc …

That, however, seems far from how Trump’s inner circle defines “Draining The Swamp.”