The United States Has Become a Two-Tier Country

What has happened to the Constitutional Republic where all are equal under law?

Philip Giraldi • April 3, 2025

https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/the-united-states-has-become-a-two-tier-country/

I recently read an article by investigative historian Eric Zuesse, author of America’s Empire of Evil, that began “One of the core features of nazism (not the German political Party but its core ideology) is racism, which allows some ethnicities (or “races”) to be advantaged by law, and other ethnicities to be discriminated against by the law — it is, at its very core, AGAINST equal rights under law.” Well, I was intrigued by what was packed into one long sentence due to recent developments in the United States and I am sure that none of my regular readers will be surprised by my view that a lot of what has gone wrong in the United States and elsewhere has been due to a racist Israel and its powerful lobbies. Consider for a moment some initiatives undertaken by presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump that Americans who love their country should rightly find to be appalling, to include the enabling of the Jewish state’s genocide in Gaza and the elevation of “antisemitism” to the status of the number one “crime” that the Department of Justice is willing to investigate and prosecute, up to and including deportation of legal residents who dare to question what is taking place in Palestine.

When I refer to America becoming two-tier I am particularly thinking of US foreign policy, most particularly as it relates to the Middle East, and the operational imperatives of the Department of Justice and the Office of the Attorney General. And when I say two-tier I am suggesting that there are specific policies that are purely the product of political and economic corruption in that they do not serve any US interest – indeed, I would point out how they are contrary to American interests and designed to favor Israel and the groups and billionaires that make up the Israel Lobby over other American citizens and legal residents. In practice this has meant supporting everything the state of Israel does, no matter how atrocious, while also funding, equipping and providing political cover for the slaughter of possibly as many as two-to-four hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and the deportation of three million more.

Biden and Trump have given Netanyahu the green light to turning what was once Palestine into an Eretz (Greater) Israel. That implies stealing Palestinian homes and land and eradicating their culture and religion before destroying their livelihoods as first steps in the neo-colonial process. And domestically our recent presidents have made American Jews a protected species, coddled and privileged by the government and media beyond all reason, making them a special group that cannot be criticized or held accountable no matter what they do. Few Americans know that the Department of Homeland Security’s discretionary funding grants to enhance security goes more than 90% to Jewish groups and sites, to the tune of well over $400 million, and that does not include taxpayer funding of the proliferating so-called holocaust museums. And recent steps to suppress social media, most notably TikTok, came about after extremist Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) began whining about negative coverage of the atrocities being committed by Israel, to include exposes of Israeli corruption of US Congressmen. Indeed, “antisemitism,” the symptoms of which deliberately include criticism of Israel, is the only crime that the Justice Department is willing to pursue with a Task Force, which may have Israeli intelligence officers accompanying, currently traveling throughout the nation and confronting universities with non-negotiable demands that they modify their teachings and take steps to stamp out any negative characterizations of Jews or the Jewish state.

And what is behind the shift of US strategic forces to exert “Maximum Pressure” on Iran and maybe even to prepare for the destruction of that nation to benefit Benjamin Netanyahu? Yes, of course, the Persians theoretically “threaten” Israel, which has its own completely illegal nuclear arsenal obtained through theft and deception from the United States, but nobody in the US government is allowed to mention that. And no one is permitted to enforce American laws if they impact on Israel, like the Leahy Law which forbids military assistance to any country that violates human rights “with impunity.” Israel clearly is qualified to be sanctioned by that standard, but no US Administration has dared to enforce the law for fear that the powerful Israel Lobby will retaliate.

Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University has described the current Donald Trump regime as an “Israel First Administration” packed with Zionists at all levels. The State Department Press Secretary Tammy Bruce has already said that “Anyone who tries to touch Israel will wind up in hell.” Interestingly, most independent observers would agree that Israel is all-powerful in Washington though they would probably limit that influence to Middle Eastern foreign policy, but that is not necessarily so. Netanyahu tells Trump exactly what to do and Pete Heghseth is already an American “rapture freak” brand of alleged Christian which means he is 100% Zionist. His first proclamation at being selected by Trump for Secretary of Defense was that he was going to eliminate “antisemitism” from the military. Apparently Pete never noticed the whole time he was on active duty how few Jews actually wind up in the military since they prefer that non-Jewish Americans do the dying for them. Beyond that, during the whole of Pete’s life in the US there was no “antisemitism” until the recently as a response to the highly visible genocide on the Gaza Strip. 22,000 children alone have been killed by some estimates. Meanwhile some Rabbis in Israel preach Jewish superiority, that non-Jews are subhuman, deserving to be killed or enslaved.

In spite of such viewpoints openly expressed by senior representatives of the Israeli government, a prime objective of the new Trump administration is to protect Israel and Jews in all their various manifestations and there is absolutely no mandate to protect Palestinians or ordinary Americans who become victims in the violent counterattacks on peace encampments staged by local Jews and, reportedly, including some Israeli army veterans. Have any violent Israelis been arrested or deported? No? Apparently, the US “justice system” is focused on serving Israel at the expense of the US Constitution’s protection of free speech and free association.

And what is the “Justice” Department (sic) doing about the Jewish hate organizations like Betar US and Canary Mission that are helping the Trump Administration round up suspected “antisemites, terrorists, and anti-Americans” who turn out to be mostly people who are only opposed to genocide. These extremist pro-Israel groups have a history of support for terror and ethnic cleansing and they are now working closely with the Trump administration, preparing lists and dossiers of thousands of Palestine supporters it wants to see deported from the United States.

Betar US describes itself as a “loud, proud, aggressive and unapologetically Zionist” movement “dedicated to defending Israel’s legitimacy and strengthening the Jewish connection to the land of Israel.” This includes “taking action where others won’t.” Its executive director Ross Glick, has, for example, met with senior government officials both under Biden and Trump and has claimed credit for the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil, who was a leader of the anti-Israel demonstrations held at Columbia University last year. Lawmakers who met with Betar US leadership include Democratic Senator John Fetterman and staff aides to Republican Senators Ted Cruz and James Lankford in discussions to rid the country of thousands of “terror supporters.”

Donald Trump was also briefed on the issue and signed an executive order titled “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism” that promises “the removal of resident aliens who violate our laws,” to “quell pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation” and to “investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities.” He subsequently wrote on Truth Social: “We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump administration will not tolerate it.”

One might ask “What might Betar get up to that would interest the Department of Justice?” Well, here it is: in late March, Betar may have even organized an assassination attempt on Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories and a leading critic of Israeli behavior. “Join us to give Francesca a [pager emoji] in London on Tuesday,” it posted online, referring to the September pager attack on Lebanon carried out by the Israeli military that killed dozens of people and injured thousands more. The killing by pager was widely condemned as an act of international terrorism. In addition, Betar routinely threatens violence against gatherings protesting Israeli crimes. At such an event at UCLA, Betar publicly stated, “We demand police remove these thugs now and if not we will be forced to organize groups of Jews to do so.” Betar has formally adopted the far-right slogan “Every Jew, a .22.”

And there’s more from the Zionist side, without any pushback from the Department of Justice. On March 24, an Israel-based and mostly US funded group called Canary Mission posted a new feature on its website, “Uncovering Foreign Nationals,” as part of its mission to identify those who harbor “hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses.” The feature listed the names of seven students and instructors, including three current and former professors at Columbia University, are among thousands of people whose pictures have been posted on Canary’s website since its creation ten years ago — all are accused of anti-Israeli activism.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is boasting of how his Immigration and Customs Enforcer (ICE) thugs have detained and canceled their visas on more than 300 international students who participated in demonstrations or even only spoke up or wrote letters in support of the Palestinians. ICE is also reportedly searching through social media to identify more “troublemakers.” That is not how rule of law is supposed to work, particularly as the supporters of Palestine have not been given a hearing, as the law requires, before being rounded up, stripped of their rights, and prepared for deportation. Clearly Israelis and Jews occupy the top tier in the reckoning of the US government, with the rest of us falling in place somewhere below, a formula reminiscent of police states all through history.

Nobody should be surprised at what Israel is allowed to get away with vis-s-vis the United States as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believes, perhaps correctly, that he owns Congress and the White House. In the eyes of the Trump Administration, just like Joe Biden that preceded it, Israel is by definition always blame-free and above reproach, even though our system of checks and balances and rule of law is being trashed due to the Israeli parasitical relationship with its host victim the United States. As is often the case, Australian journalist Caitlin Johnstone nails the dark side of the latest atrocity as described by State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce. Per Johnstone, “It’s clear that [Bruce] has been instructed to respond to any and all questions about Israeli atrocities in Gaza by blaming everything on Hamas, without even pretending to care whether the allegations are true. For some background, Israel has just been caught perpetrating an atrocity so monstrous and so abundantly well-evidenced that even the mainstream western press have felt obligated to report on it. Outlets like the Guardian and the BBC are covering the story of how 15 medical workers for the Red Cross, Civil Defense, and the UN were apparently handcuffed and executed one by one by Israeli forces in Rafah before being buried in a mass grave. According to Palestinian Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Basal, they were each shot more than 20 times.”

It is hard to believe, but based on the first ten weeks in power, the Trump administration has actually made things worse for Americans than under Biden due to the continuous threats to occupy other countries, to levy heavy tariffs on imported goods, and to punish nations like Russia and Iran if they do not agree to the conditions that the new president is laying down. As Trump and his advisers have one thing in common beyond their Zionism, that being their total ignorance on most subjects as revealed by the recent Signal chat, it is difficult to imagine what the way to avoid the clearly coming American decline and fall might be.