Sure enough, as Haas was saying this the NATO secretary-general tweeted about the “shocking scenes” in Washington and demanded that Joe Biden’s election “must be respected.” British and French leaders followed suit, as did the Organization of American States. Turkey “expressed concern.” Canada and India chimed in. Keep in mind that the US has refused to recognize Venezuela’s elected president or parliament, attempting for the past two years to install an unelected ‘interim president’ instead and call it democracy. While the Trump administration has led this effort, the Democrats – now poised to have absolute power in the US – have been fully on board.

Likewise, the only time the Republican establishment and the Democrat ‘Resistance’ banded together in near-unison was to override Trump’s veto of the NDAA military funding bill, which contained a provision that would block him or any future president from withdrawing troops from overseas endless wars without prior congressional approval. The commitment to the Empire runs deep in the Washington ‘swamp’, as Trump used to call it. “We are seeing images that I never imagined we would see in this country – in some other capital yes, but not here,” said Haas.

Democrats and their neocon allies have spent the past four years blaming Trump’s ‘America First’ policy, lamenting that he was acting unilaterally, antagonizing “allies” and creating a “leadership vacuum” in the world. Those are the talking points of the incoming administration as well. Except they’ve clearly forgotten the events of January 2020, when Trump ordered the drone assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. There were no protests from US “allies” – or should we say vassals? Instead, they fell in line with amazing alacrity.

Basically, the entire US establishment was so consumed by the desire to burn Trump at the proverbial stake, they chopped up the scaffolding that held up the Empire to use as firewood. In a speech recently, Joe Biden vowed to “rebuild, reclaim America’s place in the world” as a country that will “champion liberty and democracy once more.” That’s a daunting task, on par with putting the genie back into the bottle, un-spilling milk, or putting Humpty Dumpty back together again.