Will the ascendancy of factionalism and authoritarian rule in America be its final undoing?
“The United States of America!”
Doesn’t saying it just make your heart leap for joy?
I start hearing the national anthem play in my head, see the rockets red glare bursting in air, the American flag waving majestically over the capital skyline.
But I started wondering the other day: What exactly does the ‘united’ stand for?
I know, originally and technically it refers to the unity of the individual states. But it has taken on the more expansive meaning for us individual citizens. It suggests that we are united as a people, as a society, as a national identity.
Which prompts us to ask: What exactly during these contentious, deeply divisive, tragically troubled times does it mean?
‘United’ would seem to imply Unity. Agreement. Fellowship. Consensus. Harmony.
Does that sound like contemporary America to you?
Here are some big questions:
Are we united by a sense of national purpose?
Are we united by a belief in our destiny and place in history?
Are we united by confidence in our superiority?
Are we united in our belief in American exceptionalism?
Are we united in our desire for empire?
Are we united by a love for our fellow Americans?
Are we united by our patriotism and sense of duty?
Or are we united by our indifference?
Are we united by our faith in the American Dream?
Or are we united by our pessimism?
Our cynicism?
How about some systemic issues:
Are we united in our faith in capitalism?
Are we united in the trust of our government?
Are we united in our belief in American democracy?
Are we united by a trust in God?
A system of shared values?
An ethos?
Are we united by our sense of self-determination?
Or are we united by our sense of helplessness?
Our vulnerability and fatalism?
Our surrender?
How about some very specific issues:
Are we united in our love of guns?
Are we united by our freedom of speech?
Are we united by our disdain for socialism?
Are we united by the War on Terror?
Are we united by our hatred of Muslims?
Are we united in our hatred for Russia? China?
Then there’s the purely psychological component:
Are we united by love?
Or are we united by hate?
Are we united by courage?
Bravado?
Self-respect?
Or are we united by fear?
Are we united by our optimism?
Or are we united by our despair?
Our desperation?
Our doubt?
Here I believe is a really important question: Where does the rugged individualism which we see as the hallmark of a true American fit in?
How can we be united if we each have our own priorities and agenda?
Maybe we’re not united at all.
Maybe it’s all an illusion.
Maybe the United States of America is more like United Airlines, or United Van Lines. Catchy name but it doesn’t really allude to any real or even imagined unity.
And speaking of huge corporations, maybe we are united as customers, shareholders and employees of the vast corporations which seem to run everything these days. We are the biologic modules of a sprawling corporate Gaia, united in our service to interlocking clusters of entrepreneurial entities.
Less abstract and more the stuff of day-to-day living:
Are we united by the automobile?
Are we united by television?
Are we united by smartphones?
Are we united by the internet?
Holiday sales?
Shopping?
Football?
Which makes me wonder: Maybe we’re just a bunch of lonely people who need to feel like we belong to something.
First Commandment: THOU SHALT TAKE MONEY OUT OF POLITICS
No money in politics. Zero! First, people should stand up and declare unequivocally they will not vote for anyone who takes ANY money from corporations, lobbyists and PACs. Then, down the road, by having elections 100% financed out of public funds, we can build a democracy where our legislators might actually have some time to legislate. It is common knowledge, most federal office holders spend enormous amounts of time raising funds and worrying about winning the next election, instead of doing the job we voted them in office to do. Let’s end this right now!
Second Commandment: THOU SHALT HONOR CHOICE AT THE POLLS
It’s time to institute instant run-off, approval or range voting. This will allow minor party candidates to run at all levels of government without the understandable fear that a voter is throwing away her or his vote. Our current system has, as Ralph Nader has been saying all along, become a choice between Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum. Without real choice, meaning a range that covers the entire spectrum of political opinion, democracy becomes a sham, and purely an exercise in futility.
Third Commandment: THOU SHALT RESPECT THE COMMONS
Right off, we need to re-establish a commons. So much of what constitutes the foundation for a functioning society has been privatized — prisons, education, utilities, mail, roads, bridges. And it hasn’t worked out well, has it? The nation’s infrastructure is a shambles. There are some basic things we should all be able to have free and open access to, facilities and services which should not be at the mercy of the so-called free market: education, clean air and water, energy, health care, retirement security, the INTERNET, police, fire and ambulance services, nutrition and mental health counseling. This is not socialism. It’s having a country that works.
Fourth Commandment: THOU SHALT PUT MONEY CREATION AND THE CONTROL OF THE NATION’S CURRENCY BACK INTO THE PUBLIC DOMAIN
The control and issuance of currency must be returned to the federal government. The Federal Reserve is no more “federal” than Federal Express, and as a result America is now hostage to private banks and we rapidly becoming their serf-slaves. Either nationalize or abolish the Federal Reserve and return creation of our fiat currency to the people of America, regulated by a legitimate, functioning system of representative government.
Fifth Commandment: THOU SHALT LIVE BY RULE OF LAW
We have a two-tiered legal system, a gentle one for the privileged, a brutal one for the rest of us. The oligarchs do what they want unfettered by pesky legal restraints. Sometimes the same laws which should apply are used to oppress and incarcerate the rest of us. Same thing on an international level. Two tiers. The U.S. bullies the world, ignoring treaty obligations and international law, treating other countries as vassal states. But it uses the same legal instruments as a bludgeon, holding every other nation’s feet to the fire with sanctions, UN resolutions, trade agreements — whatever — when it serves our interests, or more accurately, the interests of corporations and Wall Street banks, which are really setting the agenda. This gross hypocrisy is creating enemies everywhere. We are long overdue to again respect the law, apply it equally and fairly across the board, both at home and around the world.
Sixth Commandment: THOU SHALT REIN IN CAPITALISM
A nice breeze on a clear spring day — good! . . . A level 5 hurricane that destroys vast swaths of dwellings and kills countless people — bad! . . . Surfer and swimmer-friendly waves lapping up on a sandy beach — good! . . . A tsunami crushing whole towns with a 100 foot wall of terrifying force — bad! . . . Sunlight from hydrogen fusion nurturing our planet with gentle rays of light and warmth — good! . . . An inferno of hydrogen fusion raining down on cities across the world as mammoth nuclear bombs, destroying the entire human race — bad! We mostly tend to agree that capitalism provides a powerful engine to drive development and progress. But too much of it and societies are crushed, democracies destroyed, vast numbers of people are relegated to serf status. Other countries have strict regulation and state control to check the ravaging effects of unfettered capitalism. Now it’s America’s turn. Either we rein it in or we can kiss good-bye our once-great country as it descends into the dustbin of history. And if the capitalist monster cannot be tamed, then it’s high time we eliminated it completely, replacing it with a system which more incentivizes noble and sustaining human traits than no-holds-barred competition, sociopathic greed, and ruthless exploitation.
Seventh Commandment: THOU SHALT MAKE CORPORATIONS SERVANTS OF THE GREATER GOOD
It will be tough but the whole bogus concept of corporate personhood must be expunged. Totally voided. It was put in place by devious methods and now must be rooted out. In general, it’s way past time to drastically restrict the charters of corporations, such that the interests of people are balanced with the pursuit of profit. This is the way it used to be in the early days of our nation. Back then, corporations were set up for specific and usually public-spirited projects, assigned a very narrowly defined charter and a fixed duration. When whatever was supposed to get done got done, the corporation was dissolved. Maybe we don’t have to return to such a limited implementation in our modern world, but we do have to require that corporations serve the common good. It is entirely legal to dictate that corporations act responsibly and take into account the needs of the community they serve, especially the communities where they reside. We have to elect individuals who are not in the pockets of the corporations and have them re-write the laws for doing the business of America. If the multinational behemoths don’t like it, let them set up in China, Vietnam or Bangladesh. That’s where they already have their factories anyway. Ultimately this will not harm the economy, it will create a society which is healthy and prosperous for everyone.
Eighth Commandment: THOU SHALT PROMOTE PEACE AND BE LOVED AGAIN
America must be taken off its war footing. The high-alert status both at home and around the world is nothing more than highly destructive fear-mongering. It is used to promote a belligerent self-sabotaging approach to international relations. It’s the product of a grossly delusional neocon imperialistic agenda which Americans don’t support — “exceptionalist” chest-beating which fills the coffers of the defense contractors but bankrupts the rest of us both financially and spiritually. We’ve meddled and bombed enough. It has accomplished nothing and created more problems and more enemies than we had before we decided that military force was the only way to deal with disagreements and crises in the world. It has also subjected the American people to unprecedented and unconstitutional levels of surveillance and a gross abrogation of our rights as citizens. Time to try peace and cooperation instead of threats and bullying.
Enough silly arguing and tiptoeing around climate change. It’s happening, it could destroy the human race. It will without a doubt reduce civilization to a shell of its former glory and sophistication. Let’s get to work. Global warming and resource depletion represent the greatest threats to mankind in recorded history. Responsible use of resources and creation of sustainable sources of energy are not only necessary, but could be the greatest unifying force ever! Brainstorming and planning will create a monumental paradigm shift and the subsequent implementation of our collective ingenuity will create jobs and bring together behind a common purpose, a world which is torn by divisiveness, fear, suspicion, anger. Though time is quickly running out, the challenge of a planet in crisis doesn’t have to end in total disaster. On the contrary, this could be a historic opportunity for a massive global initiative — one of renewal and fellowship.
Tenth Commandment: THOU SHALT LEVEL THE PLAYING FIELD
The rich and powerful have had a good run. The party is over. The wealthy should start paying back the country which gave birth to their monumental success. Inherited wealth does not give back to the community, the social and political environment that supported the accumulation of all that money. Tax it at 95% above $5 million. The heirs of the Koch brothers will just have to squeak by on their $5.2 billion. Capital gains? Capital gains is income. Tax it at the same rate as personal income. Speaking of which — time to return to the progressive tax rates of the 60s and 70s. You know them. The ones which resulted in a thriving economy! Massive tax reform across the board is in order, closing of all loopholes, penalizing off-shoring of profits, and the complete elimination of corporate welfare. Do I hear screaming of ‘SOCIALISM!’ out there? Get a life! Yes, this is redistribution of wealth. It’s been going on for thousands of years. It’s what makes a functioning society possible.
I confess, I’m not up to speed on my Bible studies. But I remember hearing at some point, there were originally twenty commandments. I guess our good guy, Moses, lost a tablet or two on his way down from the mountain.
I take this as meaning there’s room on my list for even more. So let’s come up with some ideas for Commandments 11-20. All reasonable and constructive ideas are welcome.
I’ll bet there’s a little Moses in everyone just hankering to bust out.
Come on. Go for it!
Let’s make America serve all its citizens, not just the rich and powerful.
I didn’t meet a Republican until I was 18 years old, my freshman year at university. I grew up in working class suburbs of Detroit. Everyone was union. Everyone was a Democrat. This was the party of the New Deal, FDR, JFK.
That political party, that institution which understood and worked for everyday people – the blue collars of the lower class and the white collars of the middle class – that political force which invested its energy to foster an America for all, to serve the citizenry equally regardless of class status, the party which took seriously the constitutional mandate “to promote the general welfare”, no longer exists.
The transition took place during the 90s under the saxophone president, Bill Clinton, and was complete by the turn of the century. No longer was the Democratic Party a party of the people. It ended up serving the same monied class as the Republicans. As Ralph Nader puts it, choice at the polls now was deciding between Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
Democrats currently wonder why party loyalty has been diminishing, why Hillary Clinton lost to a glib reality show host/gambling casino magnate in 2016, a manifestly dishonest, terminally shallow, narcissistic, manipulative, self-serving, completely unqualified candidate in Donald Trump. It’s not difficult to explain: The new Democratic Party is the party which railroaded one of the most popular candidates in recent history, Bernie Sanders, out of the race, stranding the largest populous uprising in decades.
As if that weren’t insulting enough, Hillary made no secret of her disdain for the “deplorables” of America, the unwashed masses who didn’t benefit from pedigree educations, bulging stock portfolios, and natty wardrobes from Prada and Armani. Her elitist predilection was then reinforced by the leak of a speech she gave to top banking executives, where she claimed she had “both a public and private position” on Wall Street reform. The execs got the real story and the voting public was served up the usual campaign blather. Is it any wonder that her bid for the presidency was crippled by plummeting trust?
The feel-good campaign mounted by the Democrats for Kamala Harris is likewise revealing. It completely lacked substance, saturated with word salad and puerile rhetoric. Openly on display was how cynical Democratic Party leaders are and just how disconnected the party is from doing anything to improve the lives of everyday citizens living real lives in real time.
To his credit in both 2016 and 2024, Trump said many of the right things which resonated with the masses of voters alienated by the new corporate trimmings of the DNC and its penchant for supporting centrist establishment-friendly candidates. To his discredit, in 2016 Trump apparently didn’t mean what he said and managed to avoid fulfilling most of the promises he made in his campaign. But it was too late. And it’s still too late. Huge numbers of frustrated and angry voters are so fed up with the tone-deaf Democratic Party, they seem to be willing to forgive Trump for just about anything. We shouldn’t do what the Dems did in 2016 and underestimate the Orange Oligarch. Because he is perhaps the most gifted smooth talker to come down the pike since ‘Slick Willy’. Fool me twice.
Of course, the Democrats couldn’t leave it at just being disconnected from flesh-and-blood entities – the voting public, real life people. They made the existential leap of disconnecting from reality itself. I refer to Russiagate.
I’m not going to get into the messy details of this scam. As there are still folks out there who believe the Earth is flat, there are a frightening number of individuals who believe that Russia, in collusion with KGB mole Drumpf – code name Agent Orange – stole the election from the universally-adored Hillary and dropped it off at the Mar-a-Lago clubhouse. Many of these folks also think that Saddam Hussein attacked the Twin Towers, Iraq had nuclear bombs ready to lob at the Lincoln Memorial and on Disney World, and the space shuttle tiles are oven-crisp taco shells.
Suffice it to say, the ham-fisted subterfuge created to cover Hillary’s embarrassing electoral failure has, to put it mildly, created extensive collateral damage. Granted, the project to disappear Russia as a nation, dismember it, and parcel it into manageable chunks for maximum exploitation, already had legs, thanks to the PNAC neoconiacs. However, Russiagate went the extra mile in convincing most of the U.S. population that Vladimir Putin is a Hitlerian monster, and Russia a backward, malevolent, evil, ruthless, genocidal gas station masquerading as a country, bent on destroying America and forcing us all to listen to balalaika music 24 hours a day. Subsequent loathing lasting right up to the present for both Putin and everything Russian – now at warp speed with the Ukraine meatgrinder in full swing – has been meticulously built on the sludgerock foundation of the DNC/Hillary Russiagate propaganda. Even today, slanderous attacks, whole-cloth fabrications about the sinister Putin and revanchist Russian war machine continue to spew out 24/7. Questioning this baseless vitriol is equated with treason. Both sides of the congressional aisle scream for blood – Russian blood – and the prospects for WWIII are real and terrifying!
Not that such mass psychosis is anything new. Manufactured crisis is one product line we haven’t offshored to China. It’s a nefarious web of deceptions at which our own Deep State excels. Which is why the U.S. never runs out of enemies and why it’s always at war. Our Nobel Peace Prize president was actively engaged in military conflict with seven countries. Obama dropped 26,171 bombs on foreign soil, just his final year in office. A “peace time” record?
Assuring the public that we’re not wasting tax dollars, that as global policeman, we’re killing people who really deserve it, that we’re eliminating serious threats to the security of America, that we’re “fighting them over there so we don’t end up fighting them here,” is a lot of work and not always as easy as it looks. Nothing reflecting favorably on the “enemy” can be allowed. America’s vile nemesis must be marginalized, dehumanized, demonized. Their leaders must be portrayed as devils, Hitlers, evil incarnate. The evil country, its citizens, its leadership, its democracy-hating government must be blamed for every mishap, no matter how unrelated. Experts must offer ever more outrageous prognostications about what nefarious plans said enemy is conjuring in order to inflict more horrors on the U.S. and its loyal allies.
With a lot of practice, the U.S. propaganda machine has gotten very good at all of this. For example, the day after Russia started its special military operation to eliminate the growing military threat NATO was creating in Ukraine, we were instructed – and dutifully did our patriotic duty by enthusiastically complying – to hate Russian music, dance, art, literature, sports figures. Even Russian cats and dogs were barred from appearing in pet shows in the West. Western businesses based in Russia packed up and left, losing billions of dollars, rather than be around those despicable, foul, savage Russians. Air space was closed to any aircraft or carrier that had any affiliation with Russia. Offices of Russian media outlets in the West were shut down. It was truly the most viciously thorough campaign of cultural genocide in recent history. And yes, U.S. citizens have in hordes stepped up to the plate and carried their weight. Saying anything even moderately nice about Russia in America – especially Vladimir Putin – risks at minimum a barrage of expletives, a possible beating, even gunshot wounds. Order a White Russian from a bartender at your own risk.
‘Hate’ like ‘love’ is a four-letter word. But apparently the former is a much easier sell. Or perhaps, considering the frustrations and anger which seem to be mounting as chaos and dysfunction in everyday life become more the norm, people were and are uniquely primed for some heavy-duty animus.
It’s a truly disheartening comment on human nature.
One final point.
Like Anthrax spores, hatred is almost impossible to put back in the bottle. It’s contagious and grows exponentially. We hate Russia, we hate North Korea, we hate Assad of Syria, we hate the Ayatollah of Iran, we hate Cuba, we hate Venezuela. We need to hate China much more. Yes, we’re lagging a little in that department. After all … Covid-19, communism, TikTok.
The problem is, hate knows no borders. Inevitably, it comes back home. Now we see the acid-drip is corroding the vital fabric of American society. The Democrats hate Trump. Republicans hate Biden. MSNBC viewers hate Fox viewers. The vaccinated hate the unvaccinated. Of course, all enlightened people are derelict if they don’t hate haters. Haters would be anyone who is a transphobe, homophobe, racist, a racism denier, anti-Semite, an anti-Semitism denier, anyone who questions the positive impact of BLM and mRNA vaccines or the necessity of internet censorship, puberty blockers for children, 5G, 3-D printed meat, or 80+ genders. No reason to talk to any of these people. Just hate them.
By the way, as haters of all that should be hated, we should be proud we live in the most democratic, wealthiest, most powerful, most just and free nation in history! We are exceptional and indispensable, God is on our side, and we are chosen by destiny to rule the entire known universe. Thus, everything we do is good and wonderful. That even includes hating!
Yes, this is how disconnect works. It operates by its own rules, has no time for mind-muddling distractions like facts, logic, reason, objectivity, respectful debate, historical perspective, common sense, common decency, love of truth.
D is for disconnect.
D is for deception.
D is for dystopia.
[This is an excerpt from my book, Electing A Kennedy Congress, a thoroughly misunderstood and mindlessly maligned attempt at restoring our country to a recognizable version of itself, one which aligns with the grossly misleading, totally fabricated image it peddles to its citizens and the world. That would be an America I am proud of!]
If we’re going to divide the voting public into two warring tribes, we should understand what allegiance to each of the major parties actually represents. Here we look at the ‘R’, next the ‘D’.
Back then, if your gross income was $4,000 or less, you paid a 20% rate. If your gross income was $400,000 or more, on the earnings over $400,000 you paid a 91% rate. This scaling of tax liability is based on a straightforward, if highly contentious principle. The more you earn, the larger portion of those earnings should go toward the general funding of government and greater good of society. What is tendered in taxes is apportioned by ability to pay.
Granted, the above chart represents an extreme example of progressive taxation in our history. But it was very typical for almost two decades. The 91% rate was in effect 1946-1951 and 1954-1963. It was only exceeded at the end of WWII, 1944-1945 (94%) and two years in the 50s, 1952-1953 (92%).
Obviously, this inspired a lot of odium among the wealthy. They claimed such a contrivance is intrinsically flawed. Because we are all just individuals, one person equal to every other in the eyes of God, we all should receive equal treatment. Just because some individuals are cleverer or financially better off than others should not single them out to be penalized or punished. Conservatives insist that tax rates should therefore be regressive – no fancy formulas and sliding scales – as opposed to progressive. We currently have a progressive tax schedule, though not as drastic as in 1944-1963. The range is 10% to a maximum of 37%.
The most radically regressive counter to progressive taxation schedules proposed by extreme conservatives is the flat tax. We merely calculate how much money is needed and based on that, derive a single percentage, a tax rate applied across the board equally to everyone.
While it is elegantly simple and seems to smack of common sense, let’s do a simple thought experiment to see how it would play out in the real world.
For our example, let’s use a fairly modest flat tax rate of 30%.
Current HHS Poverty Guidelines state that for the 48 contiguous states and District of Columbia, the poverty threshold for a family of four is $30,000. Such a family unit would be required to pay $9,000 in federal taxes, leaving them $21,000 to cover all family living expenses for the year. That would be housing, food, transportation, clothing, utilities, health care, etc. All the necessities for basic subsistence for four people on $21,000. The brutal truth is they would be confronted with a choice between eating and having a roof over their heads. The average rent for the 48 contiguous states and District of Columbia is $1,095 per month. There goes $13,140 for the year. That leaves $5.38 per day to feed each member of the family. I guess if they ate dog food, they could survive. Of course, there would be no money for anything else.
Mind you, the figures just quoted are regarded by many credible COL sites as ridiculously conservative. One says a family of four needs $70,784 to survive. Another one puts it at $92,989, more than three times the poverty line figure we used as an example.
Moving on.
Jeff Bezos’ “annual earnings” is hard to nail down. It’s definitely a lot of money and one site claims it’s $64 billion. At the same time, he sometimes manages to pay little or no taxes. Considering how convoluted his personal finances are, capturing what his “taxable income” might be is like trying to grab grasshoppers in a field at night, blindfolded, using tweezers. For our purposes here, we’ll say the 30% flat tax applies to the whole $64 billion, which comes to $19,200,000,000. Brace yourselves and get out the tissues. I’m fighting my own tears as I report this. This means poor Mr. Bezos would be forced to eke out something resembling a decent life for the year on a mere $44,800,000,000. Of course, if he came up short, he could tap into his $161 billion of personal wealth. You know, to make the credit card payments on time and keep gas in the tank. Incidentally, as an aside, spending a million dollars a day, it would take over 440 years to spend Bezos’ fortune. How long would it take that family of four to go through the after-flat tax $21,000? Three months?
The obvious point is that debates on political philosophy are non-starters in the real world. Arguing over whether Jeff Bezos deserves to be so rich or not, or whether the Ten Commandments of neoliberal capitalism demand that the ultra-wealthy be handled with kid gloves when it comes to paying taxes, whether grotesque levels of wealth inequality are acceptable, is simply absurd. None of this plays in the real world. We have a country to run and lives to live. We have a nation to cohere and a large complex, highly diverse society to manage and nurture. Divided we fall. Fragmented we fail. The greater good may require the lesser good to be dragged kicking and screaming to embrace compromises which have the greater consensus. Who was it who said “democracy is messy”? The divine right of kings didn’t survive modern societal evolution. What place does the divine right of the rich have in a modern functioning democratic nation? I’m not being facetious. Do we have to enforce sensible, constructive tax policy with a guillotine?
By the way, there’s method to my madness here.
I’m focusing here on tax policy and its real-world outcomes, because I think that’s the perfect vehicle for contrasting our nation’s two major political religions: liberal vs. conservative. While recent dramatic shifts on a host of specific issues have caused some confusion as to what these terms precisely mean, they’re still useful in identifying the two main political tribes in the U.S. As they too often say, follow the money. The antithetical ways conservatives and liberals approach tax policy pretty much sums up their respective views on the proper relationship between government and the governed.
Having said that, I have no intention of attempting to arbitrate the opposing dogmas of sociopathic conservatism and bleeding-heart liberalism. Each is supported by meticulously cherry-picked facts and impeccable illogic. The simple, straightforward truth is that since these antagonistic positions are generated by completely different, totally incompatible premises and mutually exclusive world views, they inevitably arrive at very different places. There is no way to resolve the differences. However, as I hope you’ll discover by the end of this book, that is not to suggest that we as a society must remain mired in confrontation and paralyzed by gridlock.
Back to reality.
I’ve been citing “official” numbers in terms of what people are supposed to contribute in taxes. The vast majority of everyday citizens play by the book. The wealthy, despite their sanctimonious virtue signaling and interminable whining about onerous tax burdens, do not.
With armies of tax consultants and tax code attorneys at their disposal, the rich don’t pay anything close to the official rate. Just look at these four paragons of the neoliberal profit-over-people paradigm.
The agenda of the super-wealthy is not at all opaque or complicated. They want to keep as much money as they can by paying as little in taxes as possible. This dramatically and negatively impacts all of us. To keep their overall tax burden down, they aggressively cut spending. The list is chilling: Medicare for veterans; funding for schools with low-income students and students with disabilities; funding for pre-school and child care; meager allocations for WIC, i.e. nutrition assistance for women, infants and children; funding for Meals on Wheels which provides nutrition services for seniors; housing choice vouchers for seniors and veterans; funding for NIH, which means delays in cancer and Alzheimer’s research. Still high on the Republican agenda is the longstanding goal of cutting Social Security and Medicare.
Taking a sledgehammer to initiatives which offer comfort, relief and support, often to the most vulnerable and disadvantaged, appears to liberals as cruel, selfish, inhumane, unconscionable, vicious and diabolically insensitive. Yet – and it pains me to say this – it’s important to acknowledge that for conservatives, it’s none of the above. For them it’s merely being prudent and responsible, only paying for what we can afford. They insist we simply don’t have the money to take care of everyone in need. Of course, conservatives install a big, fat monkey wrench in the machinery. Relentlessly insisting on tax decreases guarantees we are always short on money. And the con doesn’t stop there. Their relentless calls to cut taxes is then given further justification. We’re told that letting the “job creators” keep more of their personal wealth and corporate profits is great for the economy. And a thriving economy eliminates the need for all those expensive social programs. Thus, the less the wealthy pay in taxes, the better off we all are. So the argument goes.
Quite a web of magical thinking being floated, for sure.
At the same time, it is powerful, persuasive magical thinking, propagated by well-funded think tanks, promoted by influential economists, reinforced constantly by toadying pundits and the wholly captured media. Understand, this assault on the common good has been underway for over five decades. The focus and hard work of this blitz shows. The wealthy have perfected their game, while the defenders of us everyday citizens have been left scrambling, often bickering among themselves like alley cats, thrown into disarray by getting pointlessly sidetracked – identity politics, though valid and important, is a perfect example of such squandering of energy and time – thus rendered incapable of formulating and agreeing on a coherent alternative vision, based on fairness and respect for the general welfare and common good. Or as with the Democratic Party, would-be reformers have simply been bought out.
We need a fresh start. We need to look at our situation with fresh eyes.
This is where the candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. came in. He was asking the right questions, the tough questions, the necessary questions.
What kind of country do we want to live in and what do we need to do to make that happen? In a true democracy, the ‘we’ runs the show. Everyone has to give, as well as take. Everyone has to make sacrifices. Everyone has to think in terms of the “everyone”.
Timeless inspiration helps.
“Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” – John F. Kennedy, 01/20/61
This is a very tall order, both profound and fragile. Yet, it sounds as fresh and relevant today as it did sixty plus years ago when it was first spoken.
Though the election is behind us and Kennedy was forced to join the ranks of Donald Trump, we are still presented with the opportunity to meet that challenge.
RFK Jr’s message couldn’t be more timely or critical for our future. The posturing by both major parties is a deadly pas de deux that’s impoverishing everyday citizens, vanquishing the middle class, destroying the American dream, and further bloating the vast fortunes of the wdes – Republicans and Democrats – in a call for unity and a promise of hope. ealthy. It’s easy to blame just the Republicans for this, but Mr. Kennedy consistently reached out to both sides – Republicans and Democrats – in a call for unity and a promise of hope. [See “An Epistle to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.— DV ed]
I only hope his enemies – the enemies of “the people” – are paralyzed and incapable of torpedoing what may be our last chance to save America. Time is not on our side.
R is for regressive.
R is for rapacious.
R is for ruthless.
This is an excerpt from my book, Electing A Kennedy Congress, a thoroughly misunderstood and maliciously denigrated attempt at restoring our country to a recognizable version of itself, one which aligns with the grossly misleading, totally fabricated image it peddles to its citizens and the world.
Because I live in Japan and post articles which are critical of America, I am often accused of being anti-American. The truth is both counter-intuitive and disturbing.
I haven’t changed, but America certainly has.
America has become anti-American!
The Constitution guarantees freedom of the press. Yet reporters are now being intimidated and threatened with arrest and incarceration. Whistleblowers who try to expose fraud, corruption, and waste in government by making available in public news media forums information of value to American citizens, are likewise harassed and prosecuted.
The Constitution requires the government to promote the general welfare. Yet the benefits of our economic wealth are accruing to a tiny elite while poverty is still pervasive and the majority of the population scrambles to make ends meet. Among the 34 highly developed nations in the world, America ranks 17th in terms of life satisfaction — happiness — the key factors for its low ranking being massive income inequality and excessively long hours spent on average in the work place. In terms of health care and life expectancy, for the richest country in the world, America ranks abysmally low, with longevity actually declining.
The Constitution guarantees equal representation of its citizens. Yet, the electoral system has become corrupted by unverifiable e-voting, grotesque gerrymandering of districts, and torrents of money in politics, which only guarantees the voices of average voters will be drowned out and their participation in our democracy marginalized.
The Constitution guarantees the freedom from unwarranted search and seizure, and right of trial by jury before peers, yet starting in 2001 by using the endless War on Terror as an excuse, patently unconstitutional legislation has been effected — Patriot Acts I and II, FISA, and the NDAA which Obama signed into law on New Years Eve 2011 while America was preoccupied with celebrating the holidays, which have regularly been renewed ever since — now placing every citizen at risk for arbitrary arrest and indefinite detention with no access to legal counsel.
The Constitution guarantees equality before the law. Yet rich elite white collar criminals wreak havoc on our economy breaking countless laws and go free, while petty crimes by regular citizens — especially people of color — result in harsh and disproportionate prosecution and punishment.
The Constitution guarantees the right of free speech, including dissent against questionable policies. Yet, we see individuals protesting the cruel, malevolent and systematic killing of Palestinians by Israel, harassed, persecuted, and prosecuted by establishment authorities, who apparently consider the slaughter of between 50,000 and 200,000 mostly innocent Palestinians, including women and children — horrific war crimes which those in power indisputably support — necessary and laudable. U.S. support for this genocide mocks the principles we hold dear and have at least until now defined us as a people.
The Constitution specifies that the power to wage war is exclusively the responsibility of Congress. Yet the president as Commander-in-Chief as often as not ignores the constitutional limits as well as those contained in the War Powers Act, using the military purely at his own discretion. This wanton abuse of military power results in the unnecessary deaths of our citizens in uniform, while at the same time counter-productively foments enormous animosity and mistrust across much of the planet.
The US is a peace-loving country that promotes harmony across the globe and treats other countries with respect.
The US has the greatest respect for international law. It meticulously honors its treaties, and uses the UN to constructively resolve any disputes between nations.
The enormous wealth of the US is shared equitably across its population and is instrumental in keeping the standard of living for all citizens at peak levels.
All US citizens enjoy equal opportunities for a good life, self-improvement and comfort, and a better future for coming generations.
The political leaders of the US are exemplary: intelligent, well-informed elected officials of the highest integrity and concern for the general welfare, lead the nation.
Our success as the greatest experiment in self-government has made democracy in the US a model for the rest of the world.
Elections in the US are free, fair and transparent. The widest possible range of views and opinions are available for a lively national conversation, and choice at the polls.
US citizens are well-informed and actively engaged in determining the policies and direction of the country. Their voice is heard and heeded by their representatives.
Equality and human rights are among the most valued guiding principles. Everyone equally enjoys the benefits of living in the US, regardless of race, creed, or gender.
Media in the US is objective, fair, and balanced, keeping Americans well-informed of all sides of important issues. Every point of view gets equal exposure to the public.
The economic policy of the US is sound, responsible, and responsive to the needs of the citizenry. The US economy is thriving, benefiting everyone.
Corporations play a vital role in keeping Americans healthy, wealthy, and wise. They stoke the engine of economic development and wealth creation.
Good-paying jobs offering satisfying and esteem-building work are in abundance. Employees are rewarded for their high productivity and work ethic.
High-quality, affordable health care by the most successful health care industry in the world, is available to everyone.
The US puts great emphasis on infrastructure, thus works aggressively to repair and renovate its shared assets: roads, bridges, airports, the internet, public transportation.
Research and development is valued and generously funded, keeping America on top of its competitors in the international marketplace.
A solid education is available to everyone, regardless of economic status or class. A smart, educated citizenry keeps the US in the lead internationally.
The regulatory agencies of the US are scrupulous in protecting everyday citizens from the predations of big corporations, keeping our food, water, and air safe and healthful.
The US works diligently at protecting the environment, guarding against pollution and resource depletion.
The US has the best judicial system in the world. Everyone is treated fairly by the courts, promoting justice, and equality before the law.
God is on our side. It’s in the Bible.
Okay … had enough?
Most people in the US remain fooled but the rest of the world is waking up to the fantasy bubble Americans live in. Like George Carlin said, “That’s why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.”
There is not a single war or serious military confrontation since WWII involving the U.S. that needed to be fought. Every conflict where soldiers and civilians suffered death or injury was — and is in the case of the ongoing fighting — unnecessary. These battles for territory, control, resources, subjugation, spite, are the direct result of greed, hubris, racist arrogance, ideological fanaticism, sometimes just pure ego. Predictably, we hear high sounding rhetoric in every instance about spreading democracy, safeguarding freedom, responsibility to protect, defending our national interests, rules-based international order, yakkety yak blah blah blah. It’s all just spin to manufacture acquiescence and consent, to get us sheeple to stand down and let the warmongers and empire builders, the MIC and the war industry, have their way.
Those in the peace movement know the specific details rendered with this next graphic well. People who are preoccupied with living life and overcoming its many obstacles might dismiss it as fake news. But very tragically, it’s entirely factual. The U.S. just can’t stop attacking others.
There are three fundamental reasons why the U.S. is a belligerent, bullying aggressor, or as Martin Luther King, Jr. famously summed it up, “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world: my own government.”
Thus there are three reasons we are perpetually at war. These are …
Ideological Drivers of Endless War
There has never been a shortage in recorded history of master race ideologies. We find them even enshrined in religious texts. The U.S. has its share of such doctrinal canons, each couched in marvelous language and noble-sounding rhetoric, promoted by a host of noted individuals and organizations, e.g. Paul Wolfowitz, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Council on Foreign Relations, Project for the New American Century, all anointing the U.S. as the indispensable nation, the world’s rightful heir as the master overlord. There is no ambiguity or nuance here. America has formally declared itself as the supreme authority over the entire planet. The latest buzz phrase is “rules-based order”, which effectively means the U.S. will make the rules to establish the order in the world, everyone else will obey or face the consequences. Those consequences take the form of economic or military terrorism, buttressed by the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency and the awesome might of the largest military in the history of the world.
Social and Political ControlDrivers of Endless War
Defending the homeland and war command our attention. They focus our energy, steel our resolve, unify us, add purpose and drama to otherwise mundane day-to-day life. They play on our most basic instincts for survival and protection of what’s dear to us. But on the flip side, they also shut down critical faculties, create a visceral bond with the worst aspects of human nature, and open the door for tyrannical control and elimination of basic freedoms and rights. War unites us alright — in fear, suffering, misery, deprivation, shame, anger, suspicion, hate, paranoia, dehumanization and death.
EconomicDrivers of Endless War
There are huge fortunes to be made with war. Conquered nations can be plundered. At home, those who invest in war industries will see magnificent returns. The more war, the greater the profits. It’s no secret that military conflict is encouraged, in fact driven, by profiteers on Wall Street and from within the defense contractors themselves. There’s a rotating door between those who head up defense companies and those who sit at the seats of power shaping policy and making the decisions which countries will be demonized, intimidated and attacked. Our current economic/political model incentivizes an unruly, aggressive, confrontational foreign policy and generously rewards the creation of war zones and arenas of conflict.
It is often said that the U.S. cannot be without an enemy. This is only partially accurate. More to the point, it is the military-industrial complex that can’t be without an enemy. NATO’s massive bureaucracy and whole reason for existing cannot be without an enemy. What’s the point of the enormously bloated U.S. military, with its 800+ overseas bases, its vast fleets of battle ships and submarines, its vast array of military satellites and surveillance centers, its psyops and special ops and secret ops, its carving up the entire world into combatant command zones if there isn’t an enemy? Here’s how the U.S. sees the world.
Let’s bear in mind what all of this means by looking at the big picture.
The entire Imperial Project — world rule by the U.S. as a self-declared hegemon — is at its core and at every layer anti-democratic. It replaces self-determination in the countries we dominate with our authoritarian control — a polite phrase for totalitarian subjugation — making it ironic and odiously cynical that the U.S. claims to spread democracy in the world, when it regularly overthrows democratically-elected governments, then replaces them with despots which do our bidding.
Just as tragically, the decision to be an empire, the entire program of global domination, mocks the idea of democracy in America itself. It was conceived of and initiated by a tiny minority of power-drunk, monomaniacal, avaricious psychopaths, supported by a ruling elite which sees conquest and plunder as just another day at the office. Put simply and directly: We as citizens never voted for any of this. And if we understood the true nature and agenda of the Imperial Project, we would without hesitation or equivocation entirely reject it and the misery and impoverishment it ultimately entails, both domestically and overseas.
Right here at home, the Imperial Project by forcing its agenda on U.S. citizens, obliging us to underwrite it every single day of our lives with in-kind and out-of-pocket cash payments of our hard-earned dollars, coupled with the loss of freedom and opportunity, a complete silencing of the voice and priorities of everyday citizens, is at its core and at every layer anti-democratic, despotic, and exploitative. We as citizens have become an ATM machine for the warmongering lunatics trouncing other countries across the globe. We are indentured slaves to a militarized economy which requires war to function, frightened subjects of a regime that creates enemies everywhere, pawns of a power game and calculated strategy to set us against one another, a social-political climate intentionally engineered to maintain “total spectrum domination”, meaning totalitarian control even within our own borders.
Maybe the idea of a benevolent, enlightened, inspired and visionary U.S. leading the world into a new age of affluence and harmony, guided by the best principles of democracy and driven by shared humanitarian values seems appealing. But it’s an illusion. It’s an illusion fostered by massive deceptions, propaganda, brainwashing, engineered for our compliance and complicity in the madness that has overtaken our governing institutions. Read the speeches of the mentors for this type of hyper-nationalistic insanity, the architects of the Third Reich, and see how closely they align with the promises of our current batch of make-America-great-again demagogues. Creepily, ‘Aryan super race’ and ‘American exceptionalism’ are bedfellows, the spawn of the same lunatic delusions. ‘Indispensable’ is nothing but code for ‘1000 year Reich’.
Yes, that avuncular icon at the top, embraced, lauded, and emulated by the patronizers of a naive, trusting and gullible citizenry, is pointing at us, you and I, entreating us to be a part of a sinister plan to take over the world.
We better make the right choice … while we still can make a choice.
Of course I want peace. Probably as much as anyone reading this.
Naturally, I get excited and hopeful, whenever there are any signs that we are moving in the direction of a more peaceful world.
At the same time, I’m fed up with being led down a primrose path only to find an Abrams tank waiting at the end.
Trump has made enormous strides, or the appearance of enormous strides, toward rapprochement with Russia and ending the Ukraine war. He rightfully points out that this was a needless conflict. Whether he could and would have prevented it is debatable.
Certainly, the fact that the horrifying slaughter which has claimed an estimated 1,000,000 Ukrainians and 100,000 Russians may finally be ending soon is welcome news.
But make no mistake about it.
Trump is not a Peace President.
Because at the same time we entertain the prospect of peace in Ukraine, there are many extremely disturbing things unfolding elsewhere. Here are just a few revealing items.
Trump has ramped up the bombing of Somalia. Of course, we know what a threat to our national security Somalia is. And we also know that innocent Somali citizens are the wrong color, so if we kill a few thousand more, who cares?
It has been reported by reliable non-mainstream sources that a formidable number of B-52 bombers continue to arrive at U.S. bases in the Middle East. These are high-altitude aircraft, so it is doubtful they will be used to drop food and other humanitarian supplies to the besieged people of Gaza. That anti-Iran rhetoric is also accelerating makes this very concerning. Trump may not be Putin’s puppet, but he most assuredly is Bibi’s buttboy. WW3 anyone?
Lethal weapons from the U.S. continue to pour into Israel. So far Trump has approved $12 billion, that enormous sum within only a month-and-a-half. The Trump administration in a ham-fisted unconstitutional end run around Congress days ago rushed more than $2 billion to Netanyahu’s killing machine, justifying the armaments by declaring that Israel is facing a state of emergency. What’s the emergency? The tour buses for Israelis to gleefully view the genocide need an oil change?
Then there’s the constant saber rattling about China. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently announced that the U.S. is ready to go to war with China. It’s inevitable, you know. War with China. No other option. Why? DON’T BE SO RUDE! What? Are you a Xi Jinping apologist? They’re COMMIES. Enough said.
Many analysts are saying that seeking peace in Ukraine actually serves the war agenda: 1) The U.S. is seeking to split Russia off from their close relationship with China, and 2) Ukraine is a distraction. America must marshal its military resources for the Big War. Kiddie cops cozy up to Kiev. Real men bomb Beijing.
Trump loves power. Trump loves thumping his chest as the leader of the most powerful nation on the planet. Any talk of peace ultimately only in some twisted fashion feeds into delusions of empire, underscores the right of might, fuels the quest for conquest.
So …
When you walk that primrose path, take care to avoid the landmines.
With Trump’s recent tongue-lashing of Zelensky at their meeting in Washington DC, social media is now flooded with anguished cries about Ukraine’s sovereignty and how the U.S. must stand up to Russia’s empire-building invasion. The “consensus” claims Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty cannot be tolerated and must be punished.
Respect for sovereignty? Are these well-intentioned but completely misguided folks incapable of remembering the not so distant past?
Did America respect Korea’s sovereignty when it canceled free and open elections there in 1950, instigating an unnecessary, brutal war? Over 2 million Koreans were killed.
Did America respect Vietnam’s sovereignty when it decided Vietnam could not have a Communist government there and slaughtered 3 million people? Vietnam is communist now. I’ve lived there. It does just fine.
Did America respect Serbia’s sovereignty when it bombed Belgrade for 79 days and finally carved out Kosovo so it could build what was for years the largest NATO base in Eastern Europe?
Did America respect Afghanistan’s sovereignty when it refused to work with the Taliban when they offered to hand over Osama bin Laden, but chose instead to invade and launch a 22-year war? We killed tens of thousands of Afghanis, lost the war. The Taliban is still in power.
Did America respect Iraq’s sovereignty when it lied about weapons of mass destruction and invaded, killing, and displacing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens?
Did America respect Libya’s sovereignty when it and its NATO puppets destroyed the richest country in Africa and killed its revered leader, Muammar Gaddafi? Libya is a broken country now with a dysfunctional economy and open slave markets.
Did America respect Syria’s sovereignty when it funded terrorists to topple the government of Assad and eventually built bases in the country to choke off the food supply of the Syrian people and “steal their oil”?
Did America itself respect Ukraine’s sovereignty when it engineered the Maidan coup in 2014, toppled the democratically elected president, and installed a US puppet regime in power?
I could go on. But I’ll mention one last one, keeping in mind the Russiagate hoax where Russia was falsely accused of meddling in US elections …
“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
Spoken by a fellow in a time when tolerance and trust, faith in the essential goodness of human beings, belief in turn-the-other-cheek stoicism, all were still possible. It was innovative even back then, but an option which could be considered.
These are different times. No longer does innocence bloom. Hope is a four-letter word, gutted by abuse, now a contemptuous metaphor for hypocrisy and cunning. Faith, charity and love have been quantified, digitized, commodified, sexualized, turned into more weapons of mass deception and poisoning of the human spirit, just box cutters in the toolbox of a tiny elite, self-anointed as the class of absolute privilege and ultimate prerogative, self-appointed as Masters of the Universe. The sociopaths have won the class war and sit at the top of the sh*tpile they’re fabricating.
No, good people, forgiveness is no longer recommended, no longer possible, such graciousness is not the appropriate noble response anymore.
We simply cannot forgive those who are doing to our world what we see happening right now.
Jesus Christ surely would not approve of what I’m about to say. Then again, these days He’s basically irrelevant, just another marketing brand, an advertising gimmick for knee-jerk religiosity.
Please listen, friends. Take heed. It’s getting late. We have no choice. Urgency drives our mission. Common decency and timeless morality dictate our agenda.
Forgive them not … for endless war, carnage for conquest, slaughter for power and control, the creation of enemies to drive weapons sales, the demonization of other countries and their leaders to prepare the public for war and more war.
Forgive them not … for destroying the environment, killing untold numbers of species, filling the waterways with toxins, polluting the air, pumping greenhouse gases at an accelerating rate into the atmosphere.
Forgive them not … for poisoning our bodies with man-made chemicals and for-profit pharmaceuticals, for poisoning our food with herbicides, pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, for boosting the bottom line with no regard for human health or dignity.
Forgive them not … for filling the oceans with millions of tons of the debris of “civilization” and turning the vast expanses of life-giving, life-sustaining water into graveyards for the creatures of the sea.
Forgive them not … for fostering suspicion and hatred, promoting racism and intolerance, for setting humans against one another to make us all easier to control, manipulate and exploit.
Forgive them not … for persecuting Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and other truth-tellers, while promoting to positions of power serial liars, prevaricating warmongers, self-enriching enemies of truth.
Forgive them not … for destroying science as an objective methodology for obtaining knowledge and achieving understanding, for buying and bribing scientists to front for their deceptive, money-driven agendas.
Forgive them not … for rigging the economy via influence peddling and grotesque warping of the democratic process with enormous infusions of money, in order to accelerate the transfer of wealth to a handful of beneficiaries at the top, then use that wealth to leverage even more money to further enrich the already incomprehensibly rich.
Forgive them not … for desertification, deforestation, the destruction of enormous swaths of arable land, the destruction of rainforests, the ruin of ecologically-sensitive marshlands, the oil spills, chemical spills, all the direct result of blind avarice and predation.
Forgive them not … for hoarding epic, inconceivable piles of money, while so many millions on the planet struggle to survive, live meal-to-meal, starve to death, die of easily curable diseases.
Forgive them not … for flooding the planet with weapons, seeding crisis after crisis, being witness and perpetrators of killing, slaughter, unconscionable terror, death and destruction, all in the name of defense industry profits and stock portfolios.
Forgive them not … for using the media, movies, TV and internet, entertainers and celebrities, to spread lies, propaganda, disinformation, fake news to slander and marginalize bearers of truth, and to confuse, distract, and disempower everyday people.
Forgive them not … for destroying democracy and the promise of our bold and once-affirming experiment in self-government.
Forgive them not … for exploiting our innate fear of death and universal desire for well-being, for turning medical care and maintenance of health into yet another revenue stream for predatory capitalism.
Forgive them not … for violating the innocence of children, exploiting their thirst for knowledge and natural curiosity, destroying their inherent creativity, and turning our educational system into a factory for consumer robots.
Forgive them not … for taking the beautiful, majestic heavens, the pure, wholesome expanse of outer space and turning it into yet another battlefield, bristling with weapons of terror and killing.
Forgive them not … for mangling and mutilating timeless messages for spiritual growth and healing; for inverting the lessons teaching the virtues of compassion, caring and sharing; for turning institutionalized religion into cults of self-worship and warring tribes of exclusion and vilification.
Forgive them not … for Monsanto, Raytheon, Pfizer, Chase, the Fed, Amazon, Google, the NYT, Facebook, Microsoft, the entire web of corporate tyranny.
Forgive them not … for the Patriot Acts, for the 17 intelligence agencies, the CIA, NSA, FBI, DHS, the NDAA, the duopoly, Citizens United, for election rigging, voter machine fraud, gerrymandering, the scam of government by the people.
Forgive them not … for massive intrusive unconstitutional citizen surveillance, both by security agencies and private corporations, and for the oppressive censorship which has destroyed the most fundamental rights of free expression and open exchange of ideas and information.
Forgive them not … for simply being so self-centered, so selfish, so arrogant, so self-righteous and delusional, they are undermining everyone else on the planet, and creating a world which will eventually be uninhabitable for any of us, including them — the stupid self-sabotaging bastards!
FORGIVE THEM NOT … FOR THEY KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THEY DO.
And what they do is sick and evil … pure and simple.
We have to get it together, folks! Tolerate none of this. Do not forgive the “people of privilege”. Capture them. Bring them to trial. Imprison them. They know exactly what they’re doing. They do it callously, maliciously, mercilessly, intentionally, with plan and pre-meditation. We know who they are. They cannot be trusted. They cannot be excused — now or ever — if there is to be a world which is functional and supports life and positive human interaction.
No forgiveness. No excuses. No compromises. No fear.
After World War 2, the US set its sights on becoming the dominant superpower. As a benevolent dictator — an enlightened hegemon — it would spread peace and prosperity across the globe. Its first objective was to defeat what it perceived as the #1 threat to the economic and political system it represented, which was capitalism and democracy, that being communism.
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the US decided to leverage its new positioning as the world’s most militarily and economically powerful nation into becoming a full-blown empire. This was the beginning of a period of unprecedented military expansion, i.e. endless wars and defense budget increases which have now all but bankrupted the country. There are a lot of narratives out there about why things are as they are, why the economy is poised on the verge of collapse, but the one offered by War Is Making Us Poor makes the most sense. At least it explains why the excesses of DOD funding is the main reason for many of our current crises.
This short, powerful book, War Is Making Us Poor, packs more punch and understanding than volumes ten times its size. It presents unmistakeable proof of the mess our country is in, and it points the finger at rampant, accelerating militarism. The sub-title is “Militarism Is Destroying the U.S.”
Why aren’t people talking about this? Why is this never discussed or debated in the mainstream media?
The “War Is Making Us Poor” campaign is the beginning of this necessary, vital conversation.
Why did I write this book at this time?
It’s simple.
America is at the end of its ropes. It’s in a tailspin. It’s accelerating its own decline and demise. If we as a nation are not consumed by a nuclear war, then we will be cannibalized by horrible policies which will eventually lead to our destruction as a functioning nation.
Our fortunes are declining on every front. Our international standing is plummeting. Our power is shrinking. Our economic viability is fatally compromised. As a society, we are unraveling, increasingly more divided, constantly bickering and at each other’s throats. Desperation is the new normal. We are losing our sense of what it is to be “an American”.
While not the sole cause, it is our military and foreign policy which is largely responsible. We have lost our perspective and are now incapable of cooperation with and respect for other countries. We see the main thrust of this in our militarization both overseas and at home, and our exclusive exercise of military power when dealing with the rest of the world. It’s our way or bombs away. Now with our provoking Russia and China, we are crossing existential red lines. It’s Russian Roulette with bullets in every chamber.
Domestically, the U.S. — despite the propaganda and spin — is a mess. A crash — a HUGE crash — is coming. The U.S. as a country is becoming insolvent. Individually, we are in debt up to our eyebrows. And both are only getting worse. The U.S. now pays $1 trillion annually just to service the national debt. That debt is increasing by $1 trillion every three to four months. As individual citizens, with inflation so severe, people are so overwhelmed, they’re charging food on their credit cards. There’s no end in sight to any of this, other than a complete implosion.
In order to slow, and hopefully prevent, our complete bankruptcy, I say we have to target the DOD. As I explain in the book:
Can we blame all of America’s crises and deficiencies on the military? Perhaps not directly. But we certainly can blame our chronic inability to find the money to fix things on the endless wars and exorbitant DOD budgets.
The DOD consumes the biggest portion of our national budget. That makes it the “Achilles heel” for the entire edifice of catastrophic priorities.
Folks, it’s time to get real. We’re at an existential moment in our history as a nation and society. If we don’t begin to act decisively and immediately, then it’s all over.
Understand, our current national leaders will not solve the problem. They continue to exacerbate the problem. They are the problem. At the end of this very short volume, I’m offering a controversial but realistic proposal. It’s a modest beginning but at least it’s a beginning. I see nothing else out there other than whining and pleading to the very people who are responsible for the disaster, an exercise in futility.
We can still save America from collapse. But hesitation, no matter how conveniently rationalized, will guarantee failure.
It’s like reverence for innocence. Well, yes, kids sure are sweet, unsullied, open, positive, vibrant, curious. They wear their innocence well and we all envy their abandon. But we’re protecting them. So we bear all the risks and potential for endangerment. They play. We watch the playground to make sure there are no perverts, rabid dogs, snipers, or kidnappers.
As adults, it’s a different story. ‘Ignorance is bliss’ and ‘What you don’t know won’t hurt you’ work for a while until the axe falls. Or the bill comes due. Or the door is kicked down in the middle of the night. Being stupidly innocent as an adult can bring heartache and tragedy. In fact, it typically does. While embracing wholesome open-mindedness and holistic trust, so as to not preclude learning and discovery, we are also well-advised to maintain a wary eye for the sham, the con, the manipulation, the lie, the entire range of possible mischief humans are capable of.
From what I now see reported on the news, such prudence is no longer at all possible. Evidence would suggest that a dam has been breached. A tsunami of misinformation, disinformation, fake news, deep fakes, propaganda, calculated deceptions, AI artifacts, accompanied by a bottomless barrel of salacious scandals and mindless trivia, has flooded the once-habitable terrain of public discourse and understanding. We are drowning in bullshit.
It shows. People are becoming confused, erratic, and increasingly desperate. We’re being constantly bombarded with bad news, rendering us numb, dumb, wary and increasingly frightened. It seems that folks constantly are stressed out to the max. We have the firing squad of 24/7 if-it-bleeds-it-leads news coming at us from every direction. We’re surrounded by crises — personal, political, national, international. It’s beyond overwhelming.
This makes us hunger for both relief and anything that will make sense out of the chaos.
Which renders many, if not most people, vulnerable to brainwashing.
I recently saw a compilation of talking heads relentlessly hammering home completely vaporous, frankly ridiculous but engaging, arresting, highly charged, and clearly effective memes. I presume that a majority of citizens, already reeling and punch drunk from years of propaganda, hearts and minds filled with hatred and fear, stumbling about in the house of mirrors that media has become, react to a frightening degree by buying into what these people are saying. Repetition is like kickboxing. Or like kneading dough. It’s just a matter of time before the target succumbs to persistence and becomes a subdued and unresisting lump, next to be carted off on a stretcher or put in the oven. Or in the case of the TV/smart phone-addicted public, put in a coma-like trance, a hypnotic stupor, an obedient oblivion. Cut to KFC commercial or ad for a miracle age spots remedy. Save now like never before!
Here’s the video (if you can handle epic levels of tedious repetition).
Seriously? We are fine with media messaging that’s like Chinese water torture? To have our brainwaves flat-lined by nonsensical, hyperventilating, Orwellian vapor. This is not news reporting. To think so is like mistaking a metronome for a symphony orchestra.
But that’s where we’re at.
To suggest for even a moment that somehow this state of mental paralysis came about organically, the result of societal entropy or personal devolution — as if random impulse, modernity, complexity, technology, solar flares, pollen, coronavirus, climate change, over-the-counter drugs, 5G, GMOs, aspartame, and ozone depletion, randomly interacted and the default became wholesale stupidity — is both foolhardy and extremely dangerous. It didn’t just happen. It is part of a plan. That plan is about control and oppression, gross manipulation and enslavement.
Let’s give credit where it’s due. Our manipulators, our oppressors, our autocratic puppet masters, are phenomenal at what they do. They’re organized; they’ve got the bucks; they’ve gained a total monopoly over the seats of power and the social/political levers of control; they are unencumbered by ambivalence, morals, common decency; they are merciless, ruthless, focused.
For just a single but highly representative example, read this article about how the lunatic power elite work to shape the entire narrative about the conflict in Ukraine.
Now, take that level of calculated deceit, cold manipulation, audacity, unscrupulousness, ruthlessness, arrogance, pernicious intent, disdain for we the people, and scornful sense of entitlement, then replicate it over the entire spectrum of social/political ills, crises, and dysfunction — the things we whine about and debate constantly: the economy, wealth inequality, corporate welfare, socialism for corporations and Wall Street, our deteriorating education system, our crumbling infrastructure, our fake democracy, the ruling elite-controlled two-party duopoly, Covid-19 “pandemic”, our entire shameful health care system, the destruction of labor unions, the criminalizing of dissent, the marginalization and disempowerment of minorities, the Fed, the CDC, the FDA, the FCC, censorship, citizen surveillance, our two-tier justice system, and perhaps the worst and most egregious of them all, the expanding militarization of our country and its foolhardy, suicidal pursuit of world conquest.
Yes, just imagine all of this contention as the product of sociopaths and power-drunk bullies, who have no sense of duty to country, or responsibility to you and I normal everyday citizens, smug self-anointed sociopathic despots who are incapable of conceiving of, inaugurating, and promoting anything which doesn’t serve the narrow agenda of an ultra-wealthy ruling aristocratic class — truly sinister malefactors who live and breathe to humiliate and subjugate others, abuse their power and privilege, gain advantage and mount incomprehensible piles of money and affluence, regardless of the harm and suffering it causes everyone else.
Yes, imagine that!
But wait! … you don’t have to imagine it after all. You just have to look around you.
Because that is exactly what is going on.
This is what we end up with when WE THE PEOPLE lose control of our country.
This is what we end up with when self-serving oligarchs control the narrative.
This is what we end up with when fed a 24/7 diet of lies and propaganda.
Now the question is: What can we do?
The answer couldn’t be simpler. Or more difficult.
This is where improbable teams up with impossible. Because the only way to stop this is through individual responsibility — everyday citizens taking charge, both of their own lives and our government. The existing private and public institutions which have engineered this juggernaut of blind ignorance and social control surely are not going to change. The puppets of the oligarchy we dutifully “elect” to represent we the people know who butters their bread. They and their ruling elite sponsors reap huge rewards from keeping us dumb and misinformed. So if anything is going to reverse this disastrous course, it will be us as individuals, hopefully working collectively to provide support and reinforcement, wielding the power of ‘NO’.
Obviously, this is a very tall order, as epic in scale as apocalyptic it is to be on the present course. We have to be honest. Perhaps it’s impossible. Old habits die hard. For most of our lives, we everyday folks, busy with their personal lives and trusting by nature, have relied on what we thought were worthy, reliable government spokespersons, TV news anchors, elected representatives, thought leaders, even celebrities, for the honest scoop on the specific events going on across our nation, more generally for our broad understanding of the world out there beyond our immediate reach. But slowly, imperceptibly, they turned on us. They increasingly recited from an intentionally faulty script, designed to hide the truth and substitute a fabricated reality. This was calculated — correctly so — to make us easily manipulable, often voting and behaving against our own interests. They fooled us so many times, we lost count and became completely detached from reality. Evidence? Look at what we put up with as citizens. We are treated abysmally, our government no longer works for us, and somehow we maintain pride in a nation which regards us as some necessary evil it needs to patronize with hollow promises and fairy tales about exceptionalism and greatness.
Most Americans now are totally brainwashed. We everyday citizens have no idea that those who we were certain we could trust are now lying to us with every breath they take. Any resemblance between what we are told and reality is a coincidence, or a convenience because it just happens to fit with the web of lies which surrounds it.
That’s hard for anyone to swallow. It’s depressing, demoralizing, unsettling, infuriating. Worse, thinking we’re “staying informed” has always been and still is so convenient. Just flip on the News at 6, read Time or Newsweek or USA Today. Scroll through Yahoo News on a smartphone. These wonderful trusted sources look and feel as they always have. But now they’re all streams of toxic misinformation and propaganda. And most people have no clue.
So quite honestly, I’m not very optimistic.
But of one thing I’m sure. We can stop this. We know what to do.
The only question is: Will we develop the presence of mind and resolve to … ?
What if the citizens of Germany during the 1930s somehow could have known in advance how World War II was going to end? Would they have bought into the lies of Hitler and the Third Reich? Would they have gone along with the wanton aggression knowing it was a suicide mission and would turn their beloved homeland into a pile of rubble and put nearly 9,000,000 of them in early graves?
What about Japan? Before World War II, Japan was securely locked down. No dissent from the imperialistic designs of the emperor and his military class was permitted. Even so, if the vast majority had known that like Germany, their nation would be almost completely destroyed and they’d lose over 3,000,000 people for nothing, would they have so willingly and enthusiastically rushed to the battlefield to invite annihilation and defeat?
Our leaders — our cowardly, divisive, destructive, unimaginative, delusional American leaders — from Barack Obama to Joe Biden to Donald Trump, are taking America into another war. Sure, the confrontation with Russia in Ukraine will soon be over. While Trump supposedly gets America’s house in order, war will be put on the back burner. But only for now. Only because we have been humbled by Russia and spared from total humiliation by the statesmanship of Vladimir Putin.
But make no mistake about it. So far it’s been Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine. Next it’s Iran, and eventually — the big target in our game of thrones — China. It’s all part of the same flawed over-reaching strategy that predates even Bill Clinton, even Ronald Reagan. Our pathological plan for achieving unnecessary and ill-conceived hegemony over the Middle East and Eurasia, over the entire planet, may at times appear to be on hold, but it will not go away, and it won’t go away unless we make it go away.
As uninformed and misinformed as we Americans generally are, we know how this is going to end. It doesn’t take a genius to see that despite our incredible military prowess and huge advantage in the quantity and sophistication of weaponry in our arsenal, we are really bad at war. Maybe it feels good to thump our chests and yell “mission accomplished” with a big shit-eating smirk on our faces, but our self-congratulations bear no relation to reality. We lost terribly in Vietnam. We lost in Afghanistan. We made a mess out of Iraq and now have little control over the developments in that country. Libya is a disaster. We fingered Syria for destruction and with the recent fall of Assad, instead of gaining credibility in the world, the US become the object of derision, condemned for starving the country into submission and being complicit in the takeover of Syria by hateful, head-chopping terrorists. As a result of our immoral and barbaric support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, we have been shamed and assaulted by vilification from overseas and a surprising and encouraging swell of criticism at home. In Ukraine, the US and NATO are about to suffer one of the most humiliating defeats in recent history, as Russia dictates an end to the war exclusively on its terms.
The unavoidable truth is, we have a horrible track record over the last sixty years of muscle-flexing military escapades, and except for the Russian army in Ukraine, haven’t even had to face what might be regarded as a formidable world-class enemy. God help us if we do go toe-to-toe with China, now joined at the hip with Russia and other BRICS nations.
Actually, God help the entire human race!
As we swagger into the OK corral twirling our guns and acting all cocky and cool, because after all we are so exceptional and so entitled and so self-righteous and so powerful and of course always have God on our side, what are the options? Apparently the only way we might possibly “win” a real war against a serious enemy is if we go nuclear. And if we go nuclear, they will too.
And we all know how that will turn out.
So if we know in advance how World War III will end, why would anyone — except the demented neocon imperialist cotorie of hell bent fanatics, who can plead the insanity defense — push for war? Which is the same as saying, why would anyone in their right mind go along with this madness?
Because we — you and I — do know how it will end.
Either we’re going to get our asses kicked or we’re going to destroy all civilization and risk the extinction of the human race.
Ask the Germans how things worked out for them when they tried to conquer the world.
Ask the Japanese.
I live in Japan. I already know how the Japanese feel about war. I know the shame they feel about their dark and vile history of aggression in pursuit of all manner of illusory glory and mountains of booty.
No, I don’t live in America any more. But I’m still a loyal American. I deeply care for my country. And I know this.
We can’t count on the lying liars who claim to have our interests at heart, the play-for-pay politicians who are the lapdogs for the military-industrial complex and the bankers who build their staggering fortunes on the corpses of our soldiers and the tens of thousands of civilians who are collateral damage for our drones, carpet bombings and ordinance.
We cannot look to the barbaric megalomaniacs in positions of power who claim to share our values, and have the unmitigated audacity to talk about humanitarian bombing and merciful intervention, to claim we are protecting innocent people against ruthless dictators — killing thousands of innocent victims in the process — all in the name of promoting democracy and human rights, when every one of these wars is about gas and oil interests for their corporate butt buddies. To add even more hypocrisy to the insults and injuries, it is our military which possesses and employs more weapons of mass destruction than any other country in the world and it is our nation which counts among its friends and allies some of the most ruthless tyrants on the planet.
We sure can’t look to the leadership of the most sociopathic president in our history, a man who has telegraphed up front his intent to steal the Panama Canal, who openly confessed that the U.S. was in Syria purely there to steal the oil, who is intimidating one of our own allies to grab Greenland. Biden was thoroughly an irredeemable warmonger beginning to end. Our last best “hope” might have been Barack Obama. But after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, he put the whole world on notice in a U.N. speech: “The United States of America is prepared to use all elements of our power, including military force, to secure our core interests in the region. We will confront external aggression against our allies and partners, as we did in the Gulf War.”
True to form, currently there is no one in Congress or in any way associated with the White House who wants peace.
That means it’s up to us.
It’s up to each and every American to say ‘NO’ to the madness.
It’s up to us to stop all the talk about war.
It’s up to us to demand a true and honest commitment to diplomacy and cooperation with other countries, not the simpleminded, hollow, meaningless blather that we’re being fed as the trigger-fingers of our war mongers tingle and twitch, just waiting for the right moment to churn up more carnage, destruction and hatred in the rest of the world.
Strong, visionary, decisive leadership has been missing for so long in America, we don’t even know what it looks like anymore.
Arrogance and charisma are not the same as leadership. George W. Bush was as arrogant as they come and Barack Obama was as charismatic as it gets. Biden … well, he is bellicose, belligerent, stubborn, thick-skulled. Trump is the King of Macho and Bravado. But all in their own unique ways represent terrible ideas, a disdain for democracy, and a complete disregard for the will of the American people.
Here’s what I think.
A strong leader doesn’t lie to his supporters out of convenience or for his own political gain, or make mincemeat out of the facts because he thinks he personally knows whats best for the country. He respects us and is truthful, even when the truth is worrisome or painful.
A strong leader takes sometimes controversial stands on difficult issues out of conviction. He looks for direction in a set of principles — those spelled out with clarity and candor when he ran for office — not poll numbers and focus groups.
A strong leader is not afraid of tarnishing his own image because his ideas or policies might be unpopular. His concern is the greater good of America and the welfare of the American citizenry, not his place in history. At the same time, a strong leader takes criticism, respects and listens to opposing points of view.
A strong leader defends and supports those in our society who are the weakest and most need of help — because a free society and true democracy is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable, not how it venerates and toadies up to its privileged and powerful.
A strong leader is not impressed by money and power, only what fulfills the basic tenets of the Constitution and the intentions of the nation’s founding fathers, and what fosters the greater good for the majority of citizens — the general welfare.
A strong leader recognizes everyone is equal before the law and makes tough choices in enforcing it.
A strong leader cannot be bought or influenced by the rich and powerful and remains loyal to the majority of Americans who entrust him with the responsibilities of his powerful position.
A strong, visionary, decisive leader offers big solutions to big problems. If the car is broke, he fixes it or replaces it. He doesn’t just shine the hubcaps and claim he’s doing all he can, or worse, claim that shiny hubcaps will get the car running again in top form.
There are more but what I’ve outlined constitutes a good start in defining leadership.
We have BIG problems in America. They are almost incomprehensibly big. Sometimes they are within the framework of legislative and executive policy formulation. But we also must acknowledge that sometimes they are systemic problems, requiring thorough and fundamental revisions of the way we go about doing things — BIG solutions.
Which points up another example of total lack of leadership. A leader does not let others set the rules of debate, or frame the argument. A true leader brings a fresh point of view, new ideas, ones that is rife with possibilities and potential for positive change. A true leader doesn’t let his opponents decide what and how much will be discussed.
All the hand-wringing that goes on in the name of shaping public policy, basically a soap opera to keep the masses distracted and uninformed, is cowardly and insulting. The fiscal cliff crises are a stale joke. The debates over raising tax rates on the rich are simple-minded and tunnel-visioned. The irresponsible skyrocketing of the national debt to over $36 trillion and counting, is an example of what happens when you put the children in charge of the school.
If Trump were serious — and I’m not convinced he is — about actually addressing the enormous challenges facing this country, he wouldn’t be putting people in his administration who are on record and continue to publicly oppose his policies. He talks peace out of one side of his mouth while talking about bombing Iran to rubble. He talks peace but promises to continue to support Israel and its genocide of the Palestinian people, by supplying more weaponry and bombs. Pundits give him a pass. “He has his reasons.” I understand the reasons. He has to “pay back” some of his donors for their generous support of his campaign. He has to kiss the collective bums of AIPAC and the powerful Israeli lobby.
And because he addictively craves the love of the people, to show what a super patriot, make-America-great-again hero he is, he will continue the longstanding self-destructive attempt to rule over the entire planet. Because — you know — we’re the “exceptional nation”. Chosen by fate. It’s our destiny!
Go Team America!
What kind of thoughtful leadership is that? Does Trump read anything other than comic books?
Trump is not a leader. He’s a follower. He is a genius at sensing what the public wants to hear. Then he tells the public what it wants to hear. Trump is a bully. But he bullies on behalf of some of the most destructive elements of US foreign policy. To make it even more horrifying, he’s a closet follower of a nefarious and suicidal neocon world view. Trump is just an offbeat, militant imperialist, a dyed-in-the-wool corporatist, an elitist, an anti-democratic authoritarian, and a self-aggrandizing narcissist.
Hardly the makings of a strong, independent, creative leader. More the makings of a man who will lead our country and perhaps the world to unprecedented catastrophe and WWIII.
With the onset of the New Year, spirits will be high and optimism in good supply.
Let’s hope that these men and women who claim to be the consecrated spokespersons for the American people, who as a result of being elected to the highest political offices in the land probably have little doubt that they are America’s best equipped to steer the country on a constructive course, will finally live up to the high opinions they have of themselves.
Our current leaders are hypnotized by war. They lack the vision and resourcefulness to consider negotiation and cooperation. Peace is not in their thoughts. ‘Peace’ is not in their vocabulary. They are addicted to war. They are obsessed with war.
The lesson we must take from this is this: Talking to them, trying to change their minds, trying to alter their policies and methods, is a complete waste of time. It’s like yelling at storm clouds and telling them to stop raining. It’s like telling a bumble bee it should get a pilot license. It’s like talking to a wall and expecting a reply.
Which means, there is only one sensible, rational, effective course of action …
Current U.S. leadership, at all levels — we’re probably looking at 99% of those now in positions of power — must be replaced.
This is the only possible way to stop U.S. aggression and wanton promotion of chaos and violence in the world.
This must be the entire focus of peace activism going forward. We have no choice in the matter. The record is clear — an unblemished record of total failure to stop, or even slow down, the war machine.
Make no mistake about it! Replacing these misfits, psychopaths, sociopaths, and enemies of peace now in power, will not be easy.
But it can — and must — be done!
Our survival as a nation, perhaps the survival of the entire human race is at stake!
Here’s what it will take.
The two major parties will not give us the choices we need to make. Both the Republicans and Democrats are in the pockets of the military-industrial complex. And to bolster their commitment to this vast money laundering enterprise, where hundreds of billions of dollars end up in the coffers of giant defense companies and ultimately into the bank accounts of the ultra-wealthy, both major parties are fanatically committed to making the U.S. an empire.
If we want peace, we will have to elect peace candidates. And to elect peace candidates, we must on our own initiative put peace candidates on the ballot.
Identifying and choosing alternatives to the pro-war establishment candidates will not be complicated. At least for now, here’s the litmus test, consisting of three questions to be put to prospective candidates:
If a candidate answers ‘yes’ to all three, he or she deserves our full support and our vote. We then do everything it takes to get this person on the ballot. There are three ways to get them on the ballot:
First option is to use primaries. That is, run them in the next primary against one of the major party candidates.
Second option is to run the candidates as “third party”, e.g. as a Green or Libertarian or other minor party candidate.
Whatever strategy we adopt certainly will require some serious dedication and hard work. We’ll have to organize locally and talk to voters face-to-face, we’ll have to marshal all of the power of social media, we’ll have to badger local media for news coverage. We’ll have to organized rallies and bake sales, visit churches, convalescent homes, community clubs and organizations.
But recognize: this is democracy at its best! It is citizens, locally, community-by-community, working together to signal their priorities, put their values before the public, and introduce real choice at the polls.
Once peace candidates are on the ballot, then it’s up to the voting public. If we the people want to end the wars, reverse the rampant militarization of our society, if we truly want peace, then …
WE ONLY VOTE FOR PEACE CANDIDATES!
It’s that simple.
This is how we “fire” the warmongers who now populate the halls of Congress and other seats of power.
This is how we stop the squandering of our national wealth, the theft of our money!
As is common knowledge, hackers rule the digital realm. There’s no room to hide. These subversive geniuses can get into any system, any file, whether it’s protected by encryption, firewalls, or passwords which would stump most supercomputers.
I was doing an internet search and stumbled on an amazing hacker story.
It was a posting put up by a guy who claimed he hacked God’s personal diary.
No, I’m not making this up!
It appeared on the Dark Web, something I have heard about but certainly never have had an interest in exploring. Actually I was doing a Duck-Go-Go search for ‘dank web memes’, spell correct kicked in — which I didn’t notice — and I was suddenly looking at the strangest collection of links I’ve ever seen. The one that caught my eye was a post by ‘bacon heezy’. He showed a recently-penned entry — it couldn’t have been more than a couple days ago, though they use very different calendars “up there” — from GOD’S DIARY, posting it for bragging rights and, of course, for our edification.
So here we go …
A PAGE FROM GOD’S DIARY – Posted on Dark Web chat group “cosmic dildo farm”
Don’t those idiots down there read the Bible. Granted there were a few Earth millennia when I threw major hissy fits left and right. Telling people to kill their families, inciting wars, sending bears to mutilate children, turning people into pillars of salt, promoting genocide, killing Egyptian babies, killing people for complaining about my killing them — not exactly my best moments. Thank goodness the Heavenly dispensary finally got some mood elevators in stock.
Regardless. There’s a lot of good shit in the Bible, directly from Yours Truly, since I can claim credit. Love thy neighbor. Forgive your enemies. Turn the other cheek — actually I’m having serious doubts about that one these days. And then there was the greatest piece of street theater in the whole of human history, beginning with the bit about me getting Mary knocked up — without a peep of protest from good old stoic Joseph (I really like that dude). After the “virgin birth”, carpenter’s son grows up to be the best con artist ever, leads flocks of toadies and groupies from one end of the desert to another. And then the big finale: you gotta admit, the whole crucifixion thing was pure genius. I challenge the best playwrights and Hollywood script writers to top THAT SADISTIC MESS!
Okay, I’m rambling. But I’m God. So I’ll do whatever I want.
At the same time, there is a point to this, prompted by my sheer disgust with how this human genome experiment has turned out. It seemed like a pretty decent idea at the outset. But once Adam and Eve got wind of free will and ironically decided their private parts were something to be ashamed of, things started to go south. I mean it’s taken a while to get to the crisis stage I’m seeing now. Now apparently these dumb fucks down on Earth are bent on destroying themselves! What kind of exercise of free will is that? They’ve got the biggest, baddest brains on terra firma, in the clear blue sky, and in the oceans, and all they can do is poison the planet, junk up the landscape, bicker like school children, turn forests into deserts, melt the ice caps, kill practically everything that walks on four legs or has gills, rape, pillage, plunder, and invent more lethal weapons to kill one another. What percentage of their brain power drives this hopeless scenario? A cockroach could see this won’t end well — my money is on the cockroaches who will survive the gore fest, feisty little buggers that they are.
I may be God, and true, I could intervene and shut all the bad shit down with a blink of my Omniscient Eye. But what would be the point? Too many humans have become drama queens, sociopaths, crooks, liars, psychopaths, selfish dickheads, drunks, drug addicts, sex addicts, or almost as bad, terminally lazy go-along-to-get-along pussies. They shouldn’t be called homo sapiens. They should be called homo patheticus!
Humble Guy that I am, I’ll admit I called this whole human thing wrong. And by the way, being God I can be wrong without being wrong. Because I’m right about being wrong.
Anyway, I thought that their amazing art, music, poetry, literature, their altruism, good faith, basic decency, and love of Me would triumph. But evil seems to have won the day. And I don’t mean your average garden variety evil. I mean EVIL EVIL! Apocalyptic, epic, hyper-extreme evil!
But listen haters, don’t go pointing fingers. I did my job. Then I set it loose. It was supposed to improve, build on my Heavenly created-in-the-image-of-you-guessed-it … ME! But somehow a screwdriver got inserted in the spokes. And now look at how it’s turning out. It’s a horror show!
Okay, I’m tuckered out. Time for some Godly shut eye. I’ll just say, I wish these dopes on Earth knew how pissed I am at what’s going on down there. REALLY PISSED! I’m so angry I almost feel like resorting to being the vengeful asshole I too often was in the Old Testament, and visiting the entire planet with the wrath only I’m capable of. A big wake-up call. The Seven Plagues would by comparison look like a Disney E-ride. Yeah, this calls for a good dose of humility. “Listen, you fuck ups! You are nothing compared to the Major Domo who created you. You are like lumps of string cheese melting in the sun. Don’t mess with Me. And Goddammit, change course — change everything you’re doing — start getting it right, or IT’S GAME OVER. I’m not blowing smoke here! And the joke is on you, because you’ll destroy yourselves! How Shakespearian.
Alright, sometimes the Creator of Everything That Was, Is, and Will Be, needs to get a few things off His chest. But now it’s time to dream of angels, rainbows, lollipops, and My “son’s” night with Mary Magdalene. Now she’s a keeper!
At this stage of the game, it looks like one of these folks will be our next President:
Or … DONALD J. TRUMP!
Now, if one of the “good guys” wins the presidential race — an individual who reports to the “people”, truly puts the the welfare of all citizens ahead of Wall Street, the big banks, the military-industrial complex, the ruling elite and other powerful special interests, thus serves the needs of the all citizens, not just the wealthy elite — then he or she will need a Congress that supports and promotes the “people’s agenda”.
And if one of the “bad guys” wins — as has happened for decades, subjecting our nation to economic plunder, endless war, corporate welfare, pay-to-play politics, divide-and-conquer tyranny, thus cheating everyday citizens out of their fair share of our vast national wealth — we need a Congress that will stop the decline and keep the worst from happening. We’ll need a Congress that will stop the looting of our economy, the wanton destruction of the environment, the promotion of militarization, the marginalization of everyday citizens, the attack on privacy and human rights, the concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny elite.
Either way we need a “people’s Congress”, one that truly represents the people, reports to the people, works for the people, not Wall Street, not the MIC, not the Deep State, not the rich and powerful.
Congress creates and passes the laws that shape everything about our nation: how we treat our citizens, our freedoms, our responsibilities, our relations with every other country on the planet, how we treat the planet itself, war and peace, our economy, our politics, our infrastructure, our monetary and banking system … EVERYTHING!
What would a “people’s Congress” look like?
Currently there is an exemplary human being seeking election for president in 2024. He’s the son of Robert F Kennedy and nephew of John F Kennedy, both of whom gave their lives fighting the good fight for everyday citizens.
Let me be absolutely clear. While Robert F Kennedy, Jr represents a vast improvement over the current crop of swamp creatures seeking the presidency in 2024, my latest book is not per se an endorsement of RFK Jr for President. Realistically, there isn’t now and never will be a perfect person for the job. RFK Jr certainly means well but has some very indefensible and unevolved views, e.g. blind support for Israel, muddled thinking on health care. But in his defense and offering a solid justification for supporting his candidacy, he’s a thinking man, a good decent human being, and most importantly for the survival of the human race, he’s calling the endless US wars a fraud, and our entire foreign policy an abomination. He wants peace and cooperation, honesty and transparency, both here in America and abroad. He believes that government should work to the benefit of all citizens, not just the rich and powerful.
What my new book is saying is that WE DESPERATELY NEED A CONGRESS which embraces those values and that framework for governance, whether RFK Jr gets elected or not.
Many seem unable to wrap their heads around this simple, straightforward call to action.
I’ll unpack it.
If RFK Jr. is elected in 2024, THEN HE WILL NEED A CONGRESS THAT SUPPORTS AND PROMOTES AGENDA.
But if one of the “bad guys” wins, we will need a Congress that will prevent things from getting even worse.
So either way … WE NEED A “PEOPLE’S CONGRESS”!
Alternate iteration … WE NEED A KENNEDY CONGRESS!
It’s obvious, wouldn’t you agree?
My new book is short but intense and offers specifics on what a grassroots campaign must do to identify and support “good guys” to replace the current crooks, liars and lapdogs in Congress.
Maybe it’s time for some creative thinking . . . a totally unique strategy that benefits all Americans, not just capitalist predators.
Special use currency is not unprecedented.
Abraham Lincoln used “greenbacks” — the paper currency shown above, backed by nothing more than confidence in the government — to finance the Civil War. He printed $449,338,902 of this currency, a lot of money at the time.
A century later, on June 4, 1963, John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 11110 which set in motion the issuance of silver certificate notes, currency backed by silver reserves being held at that time by the U.S. Treasury. Records show that Kennedy issued $4,292,893,825 worth of cash money. This bypassed the established procedure of borrowing money into circulation from the Federal Reserve. $20 billion of such United States Notes were eventually put into circulation before he was assassinated. It has been suggested it was Kennedy’s and Lincoln’s introduction of such interest-free debt-free currency which was the primary reason both of them were murdered.
Understand that their actions were completely within the framework of the Constitution. Of course, presidents must seek Congressional approval, as the ultimate authority for creating money actually resides with Congress. This is delineated in Article 1: The Legislative Branch, Section 8: Powers of Congress . . .
There is no dispute that what both Lincoln and Kennedy did, while anathema to private banking interests, was entirely legal. In fact, progressive economists would argue that it is incumbent on our elected officials to again secure absolute control of the currency, and that money creation never should have been ceded to the private banks.
Risk of assassination aside, no legal case or compelling argument can be made against using this power. Our current debt-driven system requiring us to borrow from the private banking institution, misleadingly named The Federal Reserve, to inject money into the economy is absurd and in the long term counter-productive.
While ultimately our goal should arguably be to totally eliminate the Federal Reserve’s role in this process, at least for now we can pick up where Kennedy left off, prudently using what we call U.S. Peace Dollars, to cover a sizable portion of the federal government’s budgeting requirements.
U.S. Peace Dollars would look almost exactly like their Federal Reserve Note counterparts. Same layout, same denominations, same founders-of-the-nation and presidential images.
Where U.S. currency now says … FEDERAL RESERVE NOTE
… U.S. Peace Dollars not surprisingly would say … U. S. PEACE DOLLARS
Where U.S. currency now says … IN GOD WE TRUST
… U.S. Peace Dollars would say … PROMOTING PEACE
Where in nearly microscopic print U.S. currency now says … THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE
… U.S. Peace Dollars would say … THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DOMESTIC FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE
Which brings up a critical feature of this financial instrument: U.S. Peace Dollars would be for domestic use only. This is to prevent them from being shipped overseas or being fed into the ongoing frenzy of currency speculation. Banks would be instructed to block transfer of U.S. Peace Dollars equivalencies to non-domestic banking institutions. For example, if a person deposited $8,000 of U.S. Peace Dollars into a domestic account, transfer of funds to non-domestic banks or use of funds for purchases outside the U.S. could only be made from balances of his or her account in excess of $8,000 accruing from regular Federal Reserve Note deposits.
This restriction is to guarantee that U.S. Peace Dollars go exclusively toward promoting America’s domestic economy, meaning only purchasing goods and services “Made in the USA”. This precludes exporting any newly generated Peace Dividend wealth, which would only exacerbate our already excessive, out-of-control trade deficit and facilitate capital flight from the country.
Private banks would be incentivized to create U.S. Peace Dollars credit cards. If there is institutional resistance to this by private banks, the U.S. government can fill that need by issuing through its own agencies such credit instruments.
A host of small-business and employee-owned business incentives could be built around U.S. Peace Dollars, for example giving matching federal grants or at least preferential treatment for investing U.S. Peace Dollars in job-creating domestic business start-ups. Worker-owned businesses and co-ops could be high on the priority list for such support.
All of this points the economy in a hopeful and highly constructive, new direction. Further expanding general usage of U.S. Peace Dollars down the road could gradually dismantle the current Debt Doomsday Machine of the Federal Reserve paradigm. Imagine Congress arguing over the size of budget surpluses instead of budget deficits!
Wouldn’t that be refreshing?
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by John Rachel.
Just watching the two major parties ruthlessly claw at and attempt to malign and delegitimize each other, then seeing people now excitedly lining up on one side or the other like opposing Ninja turtle teams is both amusing and frightening. We can count on the talking heads and modern media to regurgitate a story line familiar to devotees of Saturday morning cartoon shows to give substance to our political competitions and aspirations. Unfortunately, the narrative is insultingly simple-minded and mostly a distraction.
With the nation divided into red and blue states, the news robots now have the solemn and putatively critical duty to keep us up to date on any shifting of allegiances and rebalancing of the color scheme, milking any incremental addition of a splotch of blue or dash of red for whatever drama they can generate, before cutting to a commercial break.
What has this got to do with the mounting crises we find ourselves in?
Here is a short list of profound challenges confronting the world:
Potential for nuclear war and the annihilation of the planet.
Climate change.
Resource depletion.
Desertification of shrinking tracts of farm land.
Diminishing fresh water supplies.
Acidification of the oceans and overfishing.
Antibiotic-resistant diseases.
Accelerating species extinction.
Human trafficking and enslavement.
Here is a short list of critical challenges just to our nation:
Destruction of democracy and rule by an oligarchy.
Historical levels of wealth inequality.
Loss of privacy and basic constitutional rights to the surveillance state.
Corporate tyranny and plutocratic control of the economy.
Crumbling of infrastructure and crippling of our social institutions.
Militarization of society and seizure of power by the military-industrial complex.
Police brutality and murder of innocent citizens.
Pundits and politicos in service to their oligarchic masters can generate all the wonderful spin they can. But America’s economy has been hollowed out from the inside, and due to a fanatic allegiance to a defective and extremely destructive ideology, the vital needs of everyday citizens have been ignored. Anger and frustration mount. Signs of decline and decay are all around us, behind the glitter and the glitz. Worst of all, the U.S. as a world power is losing the mantle of leadership. Its policies have inflicted so much chaos, destruction and death on the rest of the planet, the U.S. is losing its legitimacy and is successfully being challenged by Russia, China, and the non-aligned countries of the South. Of course, with the myopia and desperation that characterizes a dying empire, what’s America’s answer? More chaos, destruction and death. We are involved in a very serious war right now and the specter of World War IIIlooms frighteningly on the horizon.
Everything comes back to what we as a people do to reverse this disastrous course.
Isn’t it time to put away the gang colors and actually begin to solve some problems?
Is it possible? I don’t know.
I do know it’s absolutely necessary.
Our survival as a country and even as a species depends on it.
Likewise, an incompetent, historically ignorant, politically naive, diplomatically challenged, shallow, impulsive, narcissistic reality show host elected by a conned citizenry to the highest office in the land can occasionally get a few things right as well.
I won’t get into a spitting contest over whether the election was rigged to an extent necessary to “steal” it from Trump. Every election is rigged, to varying degrees. To deny that is to be out of touch with how fundamentally corrupt our electoral system is at all levels, and what an abysmal state our last-gasp democracy is in. Recall that on one occasion, election rigging wasn’t up to the task, so a president was elected by judicial fiat.
Nor will I come anywhere near Trump’s motives or level of involvement in the shambolic insurrection that took place on January 6.
The important thing he got right was this: We should throw every last bum out of our legislative branch, both House and Senate. I didn’t say assassinate or torture them, although a good case could be made for “disappearing” the entire lot — for good! And for the good of the nation. At least barring them from public life. I include everyone, even Sanders, AOC, the rest of the squad, all of the virtue-signaling mannikins now in Congress who spend more time raising money for their reelection campaigns and their corrupt corporate-oligarchy political parties, than taking care of the business of governing and caring for the people.
A clean sweep.
A fresh start.
Yes, there have been a few promising initiatives. But overall, there is no evidence that any of the people in power, and I also include Biden, Harris, and just about everyone in the collection of self-serving mediocrities which populate this and past administrations, know or care the first thing about serving everyday citizens and “promoting the general welfare”.
I’m sure I’ll get a barrage of comments defending these lacklustre sock puppets of the ruling elite. Let me just recommend in advance: I’m not talking about measuring these phonies by the vapid standards we’ve become accustomed to. The bar has been lowered so many times, it’s not a bar anymore. It’s a broken pipe laying in the mud. Reach deep inside, folks. Use your imagination. Recall the dreams and idealism of your youth. Imagine what the U.S. could be instead of trying to decide how much humiliation and misery we should tolerate.
I don’t have to defend the necessity of a revolution. I don’t have to defend the necessity of an occasional revolution. As you can see from the above quote, Thomas Jefferson did it for me.
Even John F. Kennedy recognized that when confronted with extreme abuse of power, we are left with no alternative.
What he said was unambiguous. If the system isn’t able to self-correct, then the system gets a big bloody nose. In extreme cases, we skip the left hook to the nose and go right for a decapitation. I hear Chanel makes a nice line of designer guillotines. How timely.
Let’s be clear. At no time in recent history has the need to replace those in power been so urgent and obvious. Real democracy is dead in the U.S. and the country is ruled by oligarchs. Not very smart oligarchs. Not oligarchs with a shred of decency. But money talks. The ruling elite have the money. Most everyday people are scrambling to survive. There’s no contest.
As much as many of us prefer to ignore or deny, Donald Trump got a few things right. Unfortunately, he suffered from a debilitating case of ADHD. He’d say the right thing, then either contradict himself in action or appoint opponents of his ideas to key positions, who then went on to sabotage whatever occasional flash of brilliance he had. Plus he was an unbroken stallion, and the Deep State realizing they couldn’t control him, deep-sixed his presidency. Most of us are grateful for that but we have to keep in mind that the cure in the long term might be worse than the disease. Turning more power over — perhaps the entire control of our nation — to the invisible autocrats of our intelligence agencies and the untouchable puppet masters of technocratic tyranny is not a very smart idea. If that’s our strategy, we might as well just get it over with and take a blow torch the Constitution. How about during half-time at the next Super Bowl.
In some incredibly twisted way, Trump was the voice of the people — at least some people — probably not the kind of people anyone here would want to hang out with. But he had (and still has) a lot of followers. His campaign was the first time in a long time that it was publicly acknowledged that a lot of regular folks were tired of getting screwed by a rigged system. Yes, Trump couldn’t have been a worse bearer of this torch. But at least we got a fleeting glimpse of the flames.
Now we’re back to the default setting: Guys like Biden and gals like Harris spouting slogans that are ear candy and brain anesthetics, woke gender-blenders like Buttigieg striking poses to get a third-leg up on the next presidential election, fake progressives cheerleading their walk-in-place approach to solving the most serious problems in history, and hapless, hopeless, pathetic voters looking at fake radicals like the Squad as the flickering pilot lights for real change. What all of this screams is form without substance. We get fooled again. New boss is the old boss with a focus-group tested bumpersticker on his BMW.
The sad thing about January 6 — and everybody knows what I’m referring to because the Alice in Wonderland narratives around are still being milked by pundits and politicians alike — is that it had both sides working to make sure it flopped, that instead of representing an actual challenge to power or a wake-up call to the public or a warning label for the buffoons and criminals now holding office, it was a huge embarrassment, an unfunny joke, a reminder that politics is Pro Wrestling, only without sexy ring girls.
Joe Biden calls January 6: “The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”
Liz Cheney — talk about strange bedfellows, Cheney and Biden — claimed the forces behind January 6 “represent a threat America has never seen before.” Which is certainly easy to say if you’ve never picked up a history book in your life.
The Congressional resolution which established the investigation of January 6 called the mob assault “one of the darkest days of our democracy.”
The Democratic Party elites are calling January 6 the domestic equivalent of the 9-11 attacks.
Did all of these people get their education watching Saturday morning cartoons?
What are these pathetic snowflakes going to do when some tech-savvy insurrectionist strolls onto the national mall carrying a suitcase nuke and turns DC into a caramelized crater?
For better or worse, the whole thing was pure spectacle — that’s the way Trump and the MAGA crowd see the world — a pathetic attempt at symbolism wrought by morons. The government was in no danger of being overthrown by such a disorganized, ragtag bunch of urban hillbillies. The real danger lay in the weaponization and politicalization of this non-event by the Democratic Party and the intelligence agencies, which had a number of embedded provocateurs, on the scene as the PR stunt devolved to its disastrous denouement.
Granted, I can’t prove this. It’s impossible in an era of fake news and fake justice to prove anything. But if a little logic and common sense are applicable here, it’s axiomatic that our internal intelligence agencies knew exactly what was going to happen, and if they didn’t actively engineer this embarrassment, then they let it unfold knowing they could use it against their current and future enemies — that would be the American people. This is a classic, well-established, and usually effective drill.
Where is this headed? A bill authored by truly one of the most lacklustre congressmen in our history, Adam Schiff, will open a second war on terror, this one targeting domestic terrorism. More surveillance, more eavesdropping, more curtailing of free speech and dissent, more false flags, more fear, more anxiety, the final nails in the coffin of what was once for the world the beacon of civil liberties and respect for human rights. Yes, it’s 9-11 all over again. Wash, rinse, repeat.
With friends like these, who needs enemies? With people representing us like Adam Schiff, who needs a foreign enemy to destroy our democracy and turn our citizens into slaves?
Put the right label on it: MADE IN AMERICA! The destruction from within of our country, its ideals, its constitution, its promise of government by the people, its self-anointed role in the world as defender of human rights, guardian of human dignity, promoter of democracy.
There’s only one remedy:
A clean sweep.
A fresh start.
Maybe these “extreme” ideas are starting to make more sense?
But you ask: “What will happen? Congress has all sorts of protocols and procedural precedents, established rules and guidelines for committee assignment and processing of legislation. What about all that legislative infrastructure?”
Exactly! What about it, folks? How about throwing out the babies AND the bathwater? Is any of it serving “we the people”? Sometimes you have to completely raze a building and start from scratch. YES, THAT IS WHAT I’M RECOMMENDING!
It’s either that or a constitutional convention or … uh-oh … we’re back to what Jefferson and Kennedy said.
Here’s a pop quiz. Do these words ring a bell? If they do, do they resonate?
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
If that’s too arcane and brainy, then tune into something more street hip, if somewhat less precise.
Events continue to unfold at a quickening pace. Facing an alarming escalation in tensions around the world, we asked Michael T. Klare for his current thoughts.
Michael Klare is a Five Colleges professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts; defense correspondent of The Nation magazine; and author of The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources (2012), Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (2009), and Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum (2000). He has a BA and MA from Columbia University, and a PhD from Union Institute & University.
We focus on the realities of the international power struggle unfolding in real time, specifically addressing the role of the U.S. in the tensions and its capacity to reduce them. We are looking for paradigm-shift ideas for improving the prospects for peace. His responses below of are exactly as he provided.
Here is what Michael had to say.
Q: We hear a lot of terms and acronyms bandied about. ‘Deep State’ … ‘MIC’ … ‘FIRE sector’ … ‘ruling elite’ … ‘oligarchy’ … ‘neocons’. Who actually defines and sets America’s geopolitical priorities and determines our foreign policy? Not “officially”. Not constitutionally. But de facto.
Michael T. Klare: From my experience, US foreign policy is set by what some have called the “blob” – the unelected, bipartisan, self-replicating network of senior Washington policymakers (NSC, DoD, CIA) plus the chairs of the House and Senate Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees; engaged former generals, admirals, and ambassadors; major defense contractor lobbyists; and key think-tank and media pundits (usually interchangeable with the other categories).
Q: We’ve had decades of international tensions. Recent developments have seen a sharp escalation in the potential for a major war. The U.S. apparently cannot be at peace. “Threats” against the homeland are allegedly increasing in number and severity. The trajectory of our relations with the rest of the world appears to be more confrontations, more enemies, more crises, more wars.
Is the world really that full of aggressors, bad actors, ruthless opponents? Or is there something in our own policies and attitudes toward other countries which put us at odds with them, thus making war inevitable and peace impossible?
MK: I believe that the United States, like all major military powers, strives for global hegemony in competition with other major military powers. This “great-power competition,” as the military calls it, is built into the DNA of major US political institutions and has full bipartisan support. It means that when America’s strategic overseas interests clash with those of another great power, say in Ukraine or over Taiwan, tensions are bound to rise and the risk of war increases.
Q: Our leaders relentlessly talk about our “national interests” and our “national security”, warning that both are under constant assault. Yet, we spend more than the next nine countries combined on our military. Why does such colossal spending never seem to be enough?
MK: The United States is, at present, the only so-called great power which seeks to exert its power on a global basis, on every continent. This requires lots of troops, planes, ships, and overseas bases. Maintaining this global military presence is very, very expensive. No other nation is event attempting to replicate this posture, so they needn’t spend so much on defense.
Q: It’s evident that you, and the many individuals who follow you and support your work, believe that America’s direction in both the diplomatic sphere and in the current conflict zones represents exercise of government power gone awry. Can you paint for us in broad strokes the specific changes in our national priorities and policies you view as necessary for the U.S. to peacefully coexist with other nations, at the same time keeping us safe from malicious attacks on our security and rightful place in the world community?
MK: The United States is not the only major power that is well-armed and threatening regional and global stability – China, Russia, and even India and Turkey are doing so as well. So the U.S. priority must be to manage international competition in ways that reduce the risk of a major war. This means pursuing additional arms control measures and installing conflict-avoidance and crisis-management measures. In particular, it means working with China to reduce the risk of war over Taiwan.
Q: The general public, especially when it’s aware of the self-sabotaging results of our current foreign policies and military posturing, clearly wants less war and militarism, preferring more peaceful alternatives on the world stage and greater concentration on solving the problems at home. As peace activists, we are thus more in line with the majority of citizens on issues of war and peace, than those currently in power.
What happens if we determine that those shaping current U.S. policy don’t care what the citizenry thinks, are simply not listening to us? What if we conclude that our Congress, for example, is completely deaf to the voice of the people? What do we do? What are our options then? What are the next concrete steps for political activists working toward a peaceful future?
MK: Calling for diplomacy, not war with China.
*****
We are grateful to Michael T. Klare for sharing his valuable and thought-provoking views. The interview was arranged by John Rachel, Director of the Peace Dividend Project. The Peace Dividend strategy is not a meme or a bumper sticker. It is an end-to-end methodology for challenging the political establishment and removing from power those compromised individuals who work against the interests of the great majority of U.S. citizens. The only hope for our hyper-militarized nation is each and every one of us having a decisive voice in determining the future we want for ourselves and our children.
Events continue to unfold at a quickening pace. Facing an alarming escalation in tensions around the world, we asked Matthew Hoh for his current thoughts. We focus on the realities of the international power struggle unfolding in real time, specifically addressing the role of the U.S. in the tensions and its capacity to reduce them.
We are grateful to Matthew Hoh for sharing his invaluable knowledge and insights. The interview was arranged by John Rachel, Director of the Peace Dividend Project. The Peace Dividend strategy is not a meme or a bumper sticker. It is an end-to-end methodology for challenging the political establishment and removing from power those compromised individuals who work against the interests of the great majority of U.S. citizens. The only hope for our hyper-militarized nation is each and every one of us having a decisive voice in determining the future we want for ourselves and our children.
*****
Matthew Hoh is currently Associate Director at the Eisenhower Media Network. He has been a Senior Fellow with the Center For International Policy since 2010. Previously he served nearly twelve years with the US military in the United States Marine Corps, as well as the Department of Defense and State Department. In 2009, Matthew resigned in protest from his post in Afghanistan with the State Department over the American escalation of the war. Prior to his assignment in Afghanistan, Matthew took part in the American occupation of Iraq, with a State Department reconstruction and governance team and in 2006-2007 as a Marine Corps company commander. When not deployed, Matthew worked on Afghanistan and Iraq war policy and operations issues at the Pentagon and State Department.
Matthew’s writings have appeared in online and print periodicals such as the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Defense News, the Guardian, the Huffington Post, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. He has been a guest on hundreds of news programs on radio and television. The Council on Foreign Relations has cited Matthew’s resignation letter from his post in Afghanistan as an Essential Document. In 2010, Matthew was named the Ridenhour Prize Recipient for Truth Telling and, in 2021, he was awarded as a Defender of Liberty by the Committee for the Republic.
Matthew is a member of the Board of Directors for the Institute for Public Accuracy, an Advisory Board Member for the Committee to Defend Julian Assange and Civil Liberties, Expose Facts, North Carolina Committee to Investigate Torture, The Resistance Center for Peace and Justice, Veterans For Peace, and World Beyond War, and he is an Associate Member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). He is a 100% disabled veteran and has been certified by North Carolina as a Peer Support Specialist for Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder.
Most recently and most admirably, Matt ran this past election cycle for Senate, representing North Carolina. His bid was unsuccessful for the usual reasons, chiefly among them big money in politics. But I suspect there was another decisive factor. Matt ran as a peace candidate and since ‘peace’ has been expunged from the national conversation, voters may have had no idea what he was talking about. The US is now 24/7/365 war and talk about cooperation and diplomacy tends to fall on deaf ears. Yet, his candidacy represented the only possible hope for a future for this country and the rest of the world.
Matthew’s incisive commentary can be found on Twitter, his own website, and at the Eisenhower Media Network.
Events continue to unfold at a quickening pace. Facing an alarming escalation in tensions around the world, we asked Margaret Kimberley for her current thoughts. We focus on the realities of the international power struggle unfolding in real time, specifically addressing the role of the U.S. in the tensions and its capacity to reduce them.
We are grateful to Margaret Kimberley for sharing her valuable and courageous views. The interview was arranged by John Rachel, Director of the Peace Dividend Project. The Peace Dividend strategy is not a meme or a bumper sticker. It is an end-to-end methodology for challenging the political establishment and removing from power those compromised individuals who work against the interests of the great majority of U.S. citizens. The only hope for our hyper-militarized nation is each and every one of us having a decisive voice in determining the future we want for ourselves and our children.
The neocons lied to us about Bosnia, Serbia, and Kosovo.
They lied to us about Afghanistan.
They lied to us about Iraq.
They lied to us about Libya.
They lied to us about Syria.
They’re currently lying to us about Yemen, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, Colombia, and China.
So …
Why would we for a microsecond think that they’re telling us the truth about Russia and Ukraine?
I looked around at major Western media news recently. There’s not really that much on Ukraine now. At least, nothing compared to the deluge we were seeing back at the onset of the “crisis”. You know, back in February almost a year ago when Putin apparently snorted PCP and went on a completely unprovoked destructive rampage.
Why so little about the greatest threat to world peace since the Third Reich?
There are two reasons: 1) This latest iteration of the RUSSIA BAD campaign, which really got ramped up in 2014, has now brainwashed a sufficient number of citizens so they keep on waving their blue-and-yellow flags, certain their RUSSIA BAD/UKRAINE GOOD battlecry embraces all they believe to be noble and true, guaranteeing 2) that now there will be no public outrage over the oceans of money which will continue to flow into the coffers of the defense industry — because, you know, it’s ABSOLUTELY THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD THAT WE DEFEAT RUSSIA on the battlefield in Ukraine. More weapons, more bombs! More wasted tax dollars! More skyrocketing profits for the merchants of death. More fattened stock portfolios for the ultra-wealthy.
Yes, while everyday people are personally struggling with accelerating inflation, stagnant wages, job insecurity and shrinking opportunity, business closures, out-of-control housing costs, food shortages, energy shortages, baby formula shortages, on and on, and because of the exploding deficit — now pushing our national debt beyond the legal debt ceiling — there’s no relief in sight from Uncle Sam for us regular folks. Yet by some stroke of magic or divine intervention, there are limitless piles of money to send to Ukraine; plenty of funding to ship increasingly lethal weaponry to the psychopathic, neo-Nazi regime in Kiev, in order to keep the war going; plenty in the vault to vastly increase US/NATO military readiness in Europe; mountains of resources available to rebuild Ukraine, relocate its refugees, prop up its comedian/puppet/war-to-the-death-of-the-last-Ukrainian marketeer, Volodymyr Zelensky, and keep the sickenly corrupt, anti-democratic regime of one of the most corrupt, anti-democratic nations on Planet Earth in power. We watch dumbfounded as members of Congress fall over one another making sure that billions of taxpayer — and borrowed — dollars get dumped into the bottomless pit of this latest conflict and ostensibly “humanitarian” effort.
I won’t get into the ongoing and demonstrably vacuous debate over Russia’s “real” motives, because what Russia’s priorities and concerns been clear for decades. Here is what President Putin said to the Russian Duma (the equivalent of our Congress) this past July 7, another critical speech which will get no mention in the Western mainstream media:
Our proposals to create a system of equal security in Europe were rejected, initiatives on joint work on the problem of missile defense were rejected, warnings about the unacceptability of NATO expansion, particularly as concerns the former republics of the Soviet Union, were ignored.
This should sound very familiar. Putin and other spokespersons for Russian national interests have been saying these same things for years. Putin’s historical speech at the Munich Conference in 2007 laid it out with jarring clarity. If the West wanted to understand, appreciate and respect Putin as the leader of the world’s largest country, acknowledge that as a sovereign nation, Russia, like every other nation has legitimate rights and interests to safeguard, that speech alone offered all of the needed insights and perspective, and moreover issued ample warning of what would be coming if things didn’t change. That was almost 16 YEARS AGO! As we all know — if a person’s not totally brainwashed and extends just a cursory glance at the current situation — not only did the trajectory of U.S. policy not alter course, America and its vassals in Europe doubled down in vilifying Putin and Russia, even manufacturing blatantly false news and slanderous innuendos, initiating crude and transparently illegal provocations, and instituting economic sanctions and seizure of economic assets with reckless abandon. England and the now deposed Boris Johnson, have been especially savage in this hybrid war effort and propaganda juggernaut.
Now we have a culmination of this treachery unfolding in Ukraine.
Keep first and foremost in mind that Russia was bound to react. The West knew Russia would react. There was no way it couldn’t react. If Russia were militarizing Mexico, training Mexican soldiers to fight the U.S., flooding northern Mexico with lethal weaponry, threatening to include Mexico in a hostile military alliance, flying nuclear-capable bomber sorties over Mexico, and had mounted an unprecedented propaganda campaign that stretched out over ten years to demonize the U.S. and its leaders (and throughout this entire onslaught of intimidation and hostility, those same U.S. leaders were warning over and over that Russia was crossing red lines and if the provocations in Mexico didn’t stop, there would be big problems), without time to blink, the U.S. would have reacted. The U.S. would have reacted big time! In fact, considering its record over the decades post-WWII, U.S. attempts to resolve the crisis using diplomacy would be minimal and superficial. It would have been bombs away with 300,000 troops swarming across the border. Tactical nukes would have been positioned, armed, and aimed in case our troops encountered any unexpected resistance.
Even more to the point of understanding the cauldron in Ukraine — and here’s what is commonly completely missed or ignored — the West wanted Russia to react. It was the plan from the beginning and that beginning got its start almost twenty years ago.
This was back in the early 2000s. Once the U.S. realized that Vladimir Putin was not a malleable drunk like Yeltsin, who would do the bidding of the neoliberal predators unleashed on Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1992, once the U.S. and its partners in predation in the EU realized that Putin was going to rebuild Russia as a world-class power, protect Russia’s economy and vast resources from further plunder by the West, and without resorting to extreme communist-style socialism, restore the government’s vital role in raising the standard of living for the Russian people, Russia was viewed in a hostile light, and increasingly portrayed as an adversary in the Western press. Russia as a military power — and yes, it still had a huge nuclear arsenal comparable to that of the U.S. — represented a real and menacing threat. Reminders of the Cold War, the extremely tense standoff with the Soviet Union which lasted four decades, became more frequent. Coexistence and cooperation were increasingly declared out of the question by the usual suspects, the bellicose and belligerent Project for a New American Century crowd and their puppets in the media. These world conquest, anti-Russian fanatics, which coalesced into the vitriolic neoconservative cabal now running U.S. foreign policy, mobilized and unleashed their longstanding hatred for Russia. Topping the list were influential insiders like Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol, and Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Destroying Russia has been priority #1 for these psychopaths. Take it apart, fragment it, eliminate any possibility of its functioning as a nation, then go in, loot its vast resources, raid its economy with predatory neoliberalism, chalk it up as another conquest. Next move on to China.
All part of the plan, to push Russia to the point where it had to engage its military resources.
More to the point of this article, it’s all part of a huge con. The biggest fraud and ripoff in human history.
I wish I could use words other than ‘fraud’ and ‘con’ and ‘ripoff’. I sound like I’m talking about the Mafia. Street gangs. Thugs and scammers.
But it is what it is. I am talking about thugs and scammers. That’s exactly how the treacherous scum deciding our foreign policy operate. They threaten and bully. They use fear and intimidation.They lie with every breath they take. They manipulate and yes … they con and defraud us. We are subjected to deception and theft polished to a high sheen. And we innocently and naively keep falling for the propaganda. We let the warmongers continue with their wars, looting our national wealth along the way. The Mafia could learn a lot from the current crop of criminals in power.
The psychopaths behind this heist — of the truth and our future — are the neocons, who now swarm like a weaponized pathogen all over Washington DC. Their “gain of function” and increased lethality is the direct result of a ruthless power grab stretching over three decades, leveraging every means and mechanism available to promote their foul, destructive policies to the forefront. The neocons are now fully in control of our foreign policy. This equates to nothing less than endless war, the destruction of our political system, and ultimately the collapse of the U.S. as a world power and potentially its demise as a functioning nation.
We have no choice as citizens. These insane scumbags must be removed from power. PERIOD!
That begins with replacing our current legislature — both House and Senate — every last one of them. Why? Because for a host of reasons, everyone we have elected supports, enables, and is fully complicit with our corrupt, neocon-infested foreign policy establishment, with U.S. military aggression, our disdain for diplomacy, our arrogant chest-beating exceptionalism. The only means available to we the people of getting rid of the neocon cabal is electing a Congress that reflects OUR VALUES — we the people — not the priorities of the war industries, investment banks, the ruling elite. If we can gain control of Congress — total control, at least 300 in the House and 67 in the Senate — we can start to flush out our governing institutions and begin to reverse our disastrous, catastrophic direction as a nation, both at home and across the planet.
We achieve this takeover by creating real choice at the polls. No more having to choose between a war-promoting/military expanding Democrat and a war-promoting/military expanding Republican. WE MUST be able with our votes to choose between war and peace. This means running candidates in every election at every level who are 100% committed to ending the wars, significantly reducing the DOD budgets (by 50% or more), and creating a military engineered and equipped to defend our borders and national interests, not conquer the world for Wall Street and our predatory corporate interests.
Here’s my plan for creating just such real choice at the polls …
Events continue to unfold at a quickening pace. Facing an alarming escalation in tensions around the world, we asked Lt. Col. William Astore for his current thoughts. We focus on the realities of the international power struggle unfolding in real time, specifically addressing the role of the U.S. in the tensions and its capacity to reduce them.
We are grateful to William Astore for sharing his valuable and thought-provoking views. The interview was arranged by John Rachel, Director of the Peace Dividend Project. The Peace Dividend strategy is not a meme or a bumper sticker. It is an end-to-end methodology for challenging the political establishment and removing from power those compromised individuals who work against the interests of the great majority of U.S. citizens. The only hope for our hyper-militarized nation is each and every one of us having a decisive voice in determining the future we want for ourselves and our children.
Events continue to unfold at a quickening pace. Facing an alarming escalation in tensions around the world, we asked Scott Ritter for his current thoughts. We focus on the realities of the international power struggle unfolding in real time, specifically addressing the role of the U.S. in the tensions and its capacity to reduce them.
John Rachel: We are grateful to Scott Ritter for sharing his valuable and thought-provoking views. The interview was arranged by John Rachel, Director of the Peace Dividend Project. The Peace Dividend strategy is not a meme or a bumper sticker. It is an end-to-end methodology for challenging the political establishment and removing from power those compromised individuals who work against the interests of the great majority of U.S. citizens. The only hope for our hyper-militarized nation is each and every one of us having a decisive voice in determining the future we want for ourselves and our children.
Events continue to unfold at a quickening pace. Facing an alarming escalation in tensions around the world, we asked Noam Chomsky for his current thoughts.
Noam Chomsky needs no introduction. He has devoted his whole life to calling out the abuses of power and the excesses of U.S. empire. At 94, he still is actively engaged in the national conversation. We are, of course, honored that he took the time to talk to us and share his views.
We focus on the realities of the international power struggle unfolding in real time, specifically addressing the role of the U.S. in the tensions and its capacity to reduce them. We are looking for paradigm-shift ideas for improving the prospects for peace. His responses below of are exactly as he provided.
Here is what Noam Chomsky had to say.
John Rachel: We hear a lot of terms and acronyms bandied about. ‘Deep State’ … ‘MIC’ … ‘FIRE sector’ … ‘ruling elite’ … ‘oligarchy’ … ‘neocons’. Who actually defines and sets America’s geopolitical priorities and determines our foreign policy? Not “officially”. Not constitutionally. But de facto.
Noam Chomsky: 250 years ago, in the early days of modern state capitalism, an astute British analyst gave a simple answer to this question. He said that the merchants and manufacturers of England are the “masters of mankind.” They are the “principal architects” of government policy, and make sure that their own interests “are most peculiarly attended to” no matter how “grievous” the impact on others, including the people of England, but more severely the victims of “the savage injustice of the Europeans” abroad. His particular concern was the victims of England’s savage crimes in India, then in their early stages.
Adam Smith’s description has considerable merit. We see examples constantly. One morbid example is the just-completed COP 27, which just “voted for global Hell,” as one Australian science writer summarized its proceedings. The leading contingent at the meeting was from the UAE, a natural leader in the campaign to end the use of fossil fuels, as we must if we are to survive. The second was lobbyists of the fossil fuel industries, ensuring that their interests are “most peculiarly attended to” no matter how “grievous” the effects on the world.
Nothing is that simple, of course, but Smith’s picture, modified for the modern age, is a good first approximation.
JR: We’ve had decades of international tensions. Recent developments have seen a sharp escalation in the potential for a major war. The U.S. apparently cannot be at peace. “Threats” against the homeland are allegedly increasing in number and severity. The trajectory of our relations with the rest of the world appears to be more confrontations, more enemies, more crises, more wars.
NC: As a number of people have pointed out, including former President Carter, the US is a rare if not unique country that has been at war almost without a break since its founding, always facing colossal threats, ever since “the merciless Indian savages” of the Declaration of Independence attacking innocent English colonists.
The antiwar intellectual Randolph Bourne, vilified and marginalized during World War I hysteria, described war as “the health of the state.” More accurately perhaps, preparation for war, which provides an enormous stimulus for the advanced economy as was dramatically shown during World War II, when manufacturing almost quadrupled in the state-directed economy. The business press in the following years recognized that social spending could replace the stimulus of war preparation, but with disadvantages. It benefits the wrong people, the general population rather than the corporate sector. It encourages democracy and public participation in decision-making; people have opinions about hospitals and schools, but not about the next generation of jet bombers. It was therefore recognized, quite frankly, that a huge military budget would be the best way to sustain a profit-oriented economy in a society with only limited formal democracy, the ideal. There have been many other such occasions.
JR: Is the world really that full of aggressors, bad actors, ruthless opponents? Or is there something in our own policies and attitudes toward other countries which put us at odds with them, thus making war inevitable and peace impossible?
NC: There are plenty of aggressors and bad actors. Gallup international a decade ago included in polls the question “which country is the greatest threat to world peace.” The result was apparently not reported in the US; I found it on BBC. And Gallup doesn’t seem to have made that mistake again. Far behind in second place was Pakistan, a result probably inflated by the Indian vote.
JR: Our leaders relentlessly talk about our “national interests” and our “national security”, warning that both are under constant assault. Yet, we spend more than the next nine countries combined on our military. Why does such colossal spending never seem to be enough?
NC: For the reasons mentioned. The terms “national interest” and “security” have technical meanings. Not the interest and security of the population, but that of the current “masters of mankind”, the principal architects of policy. And the security of prevailing doctrines from questioning and challenge.
Again, nothing is that simple, but it is a surprisingly close first approximation.
JR: It’s evident that you, and the many individuals who follow you and support your work, believe that America’s direction in both the diplomatic sphere and in the current conflict zones represents exercise of government power gone awry. Can you paint for us in broad strokes the specific changes in our national priorities and policies you view as necessary for the U.S. to peacefully coexist with other nations, at the same time keeping us safe from malicious attacks on our security and rightful place in the world community?
NC: We might begin by adhering the US Constitution, worshipped but rarely read. It determines that treaties entered into by the US are “the supreme law of the land,” to be observed by elected officials. In the post-war years, the major treaty, the foundation of modern international law, is the UN Charter, which bans “the threat or use of force” except under conditions irrelevant to the US. That simple beginning would sharply increase our security – and that of others around the world. The vast sums spent on preparation for war could then be devoted to constructing a livable society at home and to real security, like security from the catastrophe of global heating to which we are rapidly advancing in our folly.
JR: The general public, especially when it’s aware of the self-sabotaging results of our current foreign policies and military posturing, clearly wants less war and militarism, preferring more peaceful alternatives on the world stage and greater concentration on solving the problems at home. As peace activists, we are thus more in line with the majority of citizens on issues of war and peace, than those currently in power.
What happens if we determine that those shaping current U.S. policy don’t care what the citizenry thinks, are simply not listening to us? What if we conclude that our Congress, for example, is completely deaf to the voice of the people? What do we do? What are our options then? What are the next concrete steps for political activists working toward a peaceful future?
NC: We live in relatively free societies. In expressing views like these, we are not sent to the Gulag or torture chambers. We are free to act to ensure that those shaping policy will listen to the voices of their constituents, not to those of the masters of mankind, as they do. It has been well-established by academic political science that the large majority of voters are unrepresented, in that their own representatives pay no heed to their concerns but respond to the demands of the masters. Beyond that, we can act to create an arena of open, informed and reasoned discussion in which people will be free from the controls of the doctrinal institutions, which reflect the structure of private power – matters discussed by Orwell among others and documented to the sky.
We can, in short, work to create authentic democratic societies, democratic in social and political life and in the economy, eliminating masters in favour of participants.
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John Rachel: We are grateful to Professor Chomsky for sharing his valuable and thought-provoking views. The interview was arranged by John Rachel, Director of the Peace Dividend Project. The Peace Dividend strategy is not a meme or a bumper sticker. It is an end-to-end methodology for challenging the political establishment and removing from power those compromised individuals who work against the interests of the great majority of U.S. citizens. The only hope for our hyper-militarized nation is each and every one of us having a decisive voice in determining the future we want for ourselves and our children.
Ajamu Baraka grew up on the South Side of Chicago and served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. He has taught political science at various universities and has been a guest lecturer at academic institutions in the U.S. and abroad. As a human rights defender whose experience spans four decades of domestic and international education and activism, Ajamu is a veteran grassroots organizer whose roots are in the Black Liberation Movement and anti-apartheid and Central American solidarity struggles. In 2016, he was the Green Party nominee for Vice President of the United States. He currently serves as the national organizer and spokesperson for the Black Alliance for Peace.
Peter Kuznick is currently Professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University. His acclaim and popularity are certainly deserved. In addition to his contributions in academic circles, he is in constant demand as a policy analyst and commentator across the globe. He is author of Beyond the Laboratory: Scientists As Political Activists in 1930s America, and many other important volumes. Peter is best known by the general public for his highly controversial, landmark documentary created with director Oliver Stone, The Untold History of the United States, which has been distributed and viewed worldwide, receiving enthusiastic reception and generating much needed debate.
