ABSTRACT
In the last weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump promised to “drain the swamp” of Washington, eliminating corrupt economic, political, and other figures and interests who had long been appointed to key US government positions. Trump ran as an anti-establishment candidate, attacking Wall Street and a political system that represented dominant political and economic interests and carried out policies that largely benefited establishment elites. The Swamp King continued into January selecting slimy Swamp Creatures to help him extract maximum wealth and exert dirty power within the Swamp. The King and his minions chose Robert Lighthizer to be America’s next chief trade negotiator, who would work with Swamp Hawk and Ideologue Peter Navarro as trade adviser. In the nineteenth century, Karl Marx described a rapidly expanding form of market capitalism in which economic forces were coming to control more and more the state, the legal and judicial system, the educational and cultural system and even forms of consciousness.
