#bedlam reads the high republic

[kyndaris]

A New Hope

As we all know, 2023 was a messy year in the history of the world. While I know humans are not liable to change just because time has ticked over to 2024, I cannot help but hope for a new beginning. Even as remnants of the past year remains with us.

Much like the games I've been playing in the lead-up to the holiday season. And the fact I schedule these posts up to 5 to 6 weeks in advance.

Still, I feel like the themes within Star Wars Jedi: Survivor are particularly apt for a year where we've seen the Voice Referendum fail and a renewal to the conflict on the West Bank between Israel and Hamas. As someone who has dabbled a little in reading the histories and likes to think they're up to date on global events, it's saddening to see ongoing cycles of hatred with no-one party wishing to break it. After all, the game itself sets itself on the story of Cal Kestis, one of very few survivors of the great Jedi purge after the end of the Clone Wars. Throughout the game, he must reckon with his own need for vengeance when it comes to the Empire and a betrayal near the end of the game, which hits closer to home with his found family.

But as most people know, an eye for an eye only serves to make the whole world blind. Blood begets blood and we are trapped in a vicious cycle of revenge.

Of course, the question arises: how can one forgive such heinous acts done against them by senseless violence and move on?

Although I would like to say I have the answers, I don't. The entirety of human history is a back and forth of grievances, fuelled by fear, anger, hatred and greed.

And this is something the characters in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor are intimately familiar with.

The game itself starts a few years after the ending of the first in the series. Instead of being accompanied by Cere, Greez and Merrin, players find Cal Kestis running with a new group as he continues his work with Saw Gerrera to hurt the Empire in any way he can. His current mission? Stealing information held by a Senator on the planet of Coruscant.

Indeed, the very thing players see is the old Jedi Temple, taken over by the Empire. The very sight of it sets Cal's teeth on edge.

But as with all things, the heist goes wrong and many of Cal's friends are killed in the escape from Coruscant. Cal, the playable character, manages to make it to hyperspace before learning of a gyro malfunction. This leads him to crash land on Koboh where we soon learn Greez has set up his own cantina and is living a rustic life on an Outer Rim planet.

From an exciting beginning, the game meanders a little as it introduces new threats such as the Bedlam Raiders and their leader, Rayvis, before pivoting a little to some High Republic history with the likes of Dagan Gera. And while the Empire is an ever present threat to Cal and his crew in this far, far away galaxy, it felt mostly peripheral to a very contained story about finding the mystical planet Tanalor. In fact, I was surprised how much Cal didn't seem to feel compelled to make contact with Saw again, or to take the fight back to the Empire except near the end when he stormed an Imperial base at Nova Garon.

In fact, so enraged is Cal by a betrayal close to him, he reaches out to the Dark Side of the Force for power. It is only when Merrin is there to calm him down that Cal relents and tries to take a step back from his destructive path.

While the Star Wars universe tends to make many things black and white, with Force wielders seemingly being corrupted as soon as they tap in these 'dark side' emotions, it should be noted that Cal being angry and hurt are valid. Just because he is a Jedi does not mean he can't feel loss or a need for revenge.

And anger and pain and fear aren't bad.

They simply make him human.

But the most important thing I found when I played through those last few hours was how Cal didn't allow his need for revenge to consume him. With a little help from Merrin and the presence of Kata to steady him. So, instead of killing the man who had betrayed him and ripped away most of his found family, Cal offered Bode the chance to live.

Of course, this isn't something most people can do when something horrifying rips their family apart. There's trauma, there's fear, there's anger. It isn't easy to let bygones be bygones when everything is so real and visceral and immediate.

True, Israel's actions have only let to more civilian casualties and the loss of many innocents, but they're only acting like a wounded and desperate beast after the events of October 7th when people were killed and hostages taken. And yes, the Palestinians also deserve their pound of flesh too after seeing children and loved ones die because of aerial bombardment as Israel attempts to smoke out Hamas.

Hopefully by the time this post goes up, a ceasefire has been declared. But the bigger question remains of how to settle the bad blood between these two peoples. Forgiveness is not an easy thing to grant when war crimes and other atrocities have been committed against each other.

And as other countries have shown, such humiliations can be century long grudges. Look no further than China as it tries to assert its dominance in the Pacific region.

From a gameplay perspective, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor presents more of the same but with a more additional flourishes. Since Cal has relearned many of his Force abilities like Force Jump, Force Pull and Force Push, Respawn Entertainment has introduced a few more things to play around with such as Force Lift and Force Slam. Even better, it also adds in new stances like dual wielding, blaster stance and even a crossguard lightsaber - ripped straight from the Sequel Trilogy.

These all add a bit more flavour to the game although I primarily stayed with the single blade as it was the most versatile. Now I need to remind myself to use more Force powers on the regular to deal with my enemies instead of simply toughing it out with only blade work.

Oh, but I cannot talk about Star Wars Jedi: Survivor without also talking about the jump in graphic fidelity when I played on my PlayStation 5. From the first cutscene to the very end, Jedi: Survivor was beautiful. True, sometimes the textures took a while to pop in even though I played the game six months after launch, but the panoramas I saw while gliding or just climbing up a mountain were a sight to behold.

Then, of course, there was the music as it took cues from the score of one John Williams. One tune that stuck with me throughout the game was the little ditty that played whenever I opened up a Stim chest. Instead of Star Wars, it almost had a Hogwarts ring to it. After all, John Williams was also the composer to the Harry Potter films. Is it any wonder some of the motifs and cues are shared?

In any case, after finishing Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and nabbing the platinum trophy, I look forward to see what Respawn Entertainment will go next (even as I hope they'll ditch the Dark Souls-esque nature of the meditation points and the loss of experience points should you fall in battle). It'll also be interesting to see where Cal's journey take him next. Especially as we head closer and closer to the events of the original trilogy where the Empire is defeated by upstart rebels.

Also, here's hoping poor Cal gets to wear his lovable poncho again from the very start of the game instead of it being gated behind an annoying boss battle.

On that note, it is also my most heartfelt wish for the world to find some semblance of balance and peace. Change needs to happen. It is inevitable. Yet, sometimes it's okay for it to take a bit longer to do so.

As long as it does.

[bedlamsbard]

VERY SCATTERED thoughts on Star Wars: The High Republic: Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule -- not terribly spoilery, but probably there’s some if you don’t want to not be spoiled at all.  I’m just going to copy and paste from last night’s Twitter thread(s), so this is definitely not in the top ten most coherent things I’ve ever written.

Under a cut for anyone who is avoiding spoilers.

Light of the Jedi is fine. Weirdly paced, probably a nightmare to read if you're going to read it over several days rather than in one day because of the size of the cast of characters (go back to doing those, Lucasfilm), very much a Western. 

I will say this, as someone who came out of the EU: this book is REALLY jarring to read if you're familiar with the EU, especially the Old Republic era but quite a lot of the later-set stuff as well. It's essentially a reset, but there are things in there that are just ???? like, okay, we're going to change where bacta comes from, sure...? why...?  hyperspace is weird and scary a mere two hundred years before TPM.  why...?

I had this vibe from A Test of Courage (which I read first), but I'm getting it here too -- the Jedi seem more...Christian. It's not something I can put my finger on or point to anything really specific, but something about the approach feels far more Western. I know the promo and publicity for the High Republic series leaned hard into the Knights of the Round Table vibe and it's very...I mean, I can't argue?  I'm not totally comfortable with it?

Coming out of the PT/TCW era as well, these Jedi seem more...what's the word I want. They're not necessarily different philosophically (except for the fact they read more Western-influenced than Eastern), but they're...smoother. That's not a great descriptor. The PT era Jedi feel scrappier, and I don't necessarily mean that just because we mostly see them in the midst of the Clone Wars. (I came out of the PT-era EU, not just the Clone Wars era.) Maybe this is the event that's going to scrape the Jedi down to bare bones and sharp-edged teeth. Maybe I missed something not having read the PT-era new canon. Again, like, I don't think they're philosophically different, they're hmm. less...desperate?  and certainly part of that is that the PT Jedi are in their twilight, even before the Clone Wars, and the High Republic Jedi are at their height, but... *flips hands* I don't know.

also I'm going to be honest if I saw the words "we are all the Republic" one more time I was going to lose my mind. this is particularly noticeable because the government is apparently just the Chancellor and two ministers. you are telling me the Senate doesn't care?  perhaps I am particularly sensitive to this because of the U.S. politics we are all suffering through but WHERE WAS THE SENATE.

the Nihil are whatever.

a lot of the design choices in this book feel very Rule of Cool, which going by the way that the designs seem to have been done may actually be true. (lightsabers...holstered?)  (honestly I have my back up with how SW introduced them by basically going "ALL RIGHT COSPLAYERS HAVE AT."   and I feel kind of weird about the fact they went for the blonde white woman as their main Jedi.)  just a lot of this feels very "okay what if we do THIS because it's COOL" which like as a fic writer sure! fine! that's great! I'm tired.

I can't believe we have to live through three phases of this for at least the next three years.

anyway it's fine. the pacing in Light of the Jedi is fucked up -- mostly it's fine but then there's the back third and that's...not...great. especially if one is trying to apply timeline logic.

***

[this is a separate thread I wrote about the same book]

was not expecting the trend in new canon Star Wars to be authors being really weird about writing nonhumans but whatever like, they're doing it, but the descriptions are...weird.  it's the less fucked up equivalent of "she breasted boobily"

this is something I think about a lot because I write from Twi'lek POVs all the time, so I am probably more sensitive to it than average

would you describe a human in this way? no? then don't do it. (I should specify because lolsob people, would you describe whatever your idea of a Standard Person is in this way? no? then don't do it. because people are also weird about describing, amongst others, women and POC.)

this sort of thing isn't, like, BAD but it also feels very...unnatural.

IDK, this is one of the Star Wars things that I'm unusually sensitive about.

the author is less weird about describing some of the other nonhumans so I think it's entirely possible he doesn't think his audience knows what the fuck a Nautolan is

um.

if you didn't already know what Togruta looked like this description would make zero sense so it's kind of just reading like the author going "Togruta are sexy, check."

(I swear I'm getting other stuff from this book too, it's just the description thing is what I'm attuned to so it's getting the most commentary from me.)

[subthread in response to a question I got about this sort of thing]

I don't know that there's a pattern -- I'm not doing much SW reading because I don't generally find it enjoyable anymore, but what I usually look for are 1) in a close third person POV how is the author having the character describe themselves?

and then, is that described in a way that feels natural? (thinking about Freed having Hera call her skin "jade-colored" or here "tentacles emerging from the back of his skull.") is there an ever-present awareness from within the character that they're not "human-standard"?

2) how much does the narrative exoticize their non-humanness -- Soh talking about Togruta in this thread is a very obvious example, even if that's not a Togruta describing themselves.

if it feels like the narrative is going "LOOK! THEY'RE NOT HUMAN!" and then lays out the ways how based on their physical characteristics. and what the narrator chooses to describe and not (skin color, lekku, horns, etc.)

there can also just be some REALLY weird phrasing around the way authors choose to describe nonhuman characters -- thinking about EKJ's Ahsoka talking about how "her head had grown again", that'a a phrase that lives rent-free in my brain.

also Soule has a weird quirk I've noticed where nonhuman characters are not described as being "a Twi'lek" or "a Tholothian" but as "Twi'lek" or "Tholothian" -- using the species as an adjective rather than a noun, which grates a little on me because it's not SW standard.

and then also the decision about what's being described sometimes just feels WEIRD in a Star Wars setting, and it's particularly glaring here because there are some species Soule's singling out to describe and some that are just allowed to exist.

*snaps fingers* and also if the author will identify various nonhumans as their species, but never specify that humans are humans, even while describing skin tone, eye color, etc. (I mention this because I JUST ran into this in the book.)

the human default is really jarring in this book even if there are a ton of nonhuman characters, because he tends to not specify that the humans are human. like, I'm more attuned to it than most of the audience for various reasons, but. *flips hand*

like, this is definitely a thing I'm unusually sensitive to because of Backbone, so. *shrug*

[qqueenofhades]

Friend! Out of curiosity, as Resident Historian, do you have any thoughts on historical ableism and acceptance/non-acceptance of disability? (Ideally especially during the Golden Age of Piracy but I'm also generally fascinated)

Hehe. Of course I have Thoughts. When do I not have Thoughts.

Medieval disability studies have started to become a considerable trend in just the past 10 years or so, and that link above provides a brief overview and several selections for further reading. The medieval era is obviously the one I know most about, and there was – if no form of institutionalized or regularized medical care for the disabled and ill – not total ignorance of it either. Almshouses (essentially charity homes for the sick and disabled) and leper hospitals were increasingly common in Europe from the eleventh century on. Leprosy was associated with the crusades, and the founding of hospitals for them was viewed as both a social necessity, to segregate those with a highly visible, contagious, and debilitating disease from others, and as a charitable duty for the care of holy people (crusaders) who had achieved some virtue by their actions. There was considerable influence in ideas about the holiness of suffering, and that those who did so were closer to God. In fact, medieval care of the disabled was strongly influenced by classical Christian ideas of piety: care for the sick, feed the hungry, etc, and there were orders of monks and nuns dedicated to it. 

As ever, your class was the strongest determining factor of the care you received: if you were wealthy, you could pay for servants to tend your needs, and live fairly comfortably in your own home. Disability and illness was not a disqualifying factor from attaining high office (as you might expect in a world without modern medical care – everyone would be subject to the same things), and there are many representations of disability in medieval manuscripts. But if you were poor, you were reliant on whatever care your family could or wanted to provide for you, or had to hope you could get a place at an almshouse or similar institution. There were superstitions around disability, and if you had to work for your living in any way (aka everyone below the nobility), this seriously disadvantaged you. But the disabled lived fairly freely in their communities, including in positions of power, weren’t an uncommon or unexpected sight by any means, and had some basic (if doubtless not particularly comfortable) system set up for their care, based on religious charity and individual piety.

As leprosy, a visibly disfiguring physical disease, mostly disappeared from Western Europe around 1500, a new focus on mental disability appeared instead, centered especially on the imagery of the “Ship of Fools.” Michel Foucault talks about this in Madness and Civilization, but it was a particular theme in literature and art, based around the 1494 epic poem “Das Narrenschiff” by the humanist Sebastian Brant. It was, once again, a moral commentary on both humanity and, particularly, the corrupt Catholic Church. The “fools” were placed on a ship and ostracized (symbolically) from the body politic; madness was a concerning and troubling political feature among several monarchs (such as with Joanna “the Mad” of Castile and Charles VI of France, as well as Henry VI of England) and it began to be viewed more negatively than it necessarily had been in the medieval era. Aka: as ever, physical disability was easier to understand and to care for, but mental disabilities got the shaft.

In regard to the Golden Age of Piracy (1650-1726, or thereabouts) pirates were, as ever, radical in their social organization and mores. We already know that they were hella queer, had their own form of gay marriage (often shared in a threesome with a woman) and in general were socially liberal, egalitarian, and democratic (honestly, Black Sails is incredibly accurate in capturing the spirit of the historical pirates’ republic and lifestyle, and it was conceived specifically in response to the brutality and oppression of the Navy, which many of them had fled). This extended to their treatment of disability, though medical care and disability had obviously been common to seamen long before pirates. However, while a debilitating injury often meant that a merchant or Navy sailor was turned out with not much option for future employment, pirates established basic workman’s comp and social insurance for everyone aboard a ship. Pirate articles often included specific provisions for disability and loss of limb; Henry Morgan’s in 1671 spell out various sums for the loss of a leg, arm, or eye. Furthermore, disability payments could sometimes continue indefinitely. So a pirate with a peg leg or a hook for a hand or an eyepatch (or all the other pirate trappings, many of which were popularized by Stevenson in Treasure Island) would actually be uncommon. If they got severely or traumatically injured in the line of duty, they could retire with enough money to support themselves, and not need to hazard the dangerous and difficult life of an amputee aboard a traditional sailing ship. (Incidentally, the popular image of a pirate is often how disability began to be represented in the media.)

The excavation and recovery of the Queen Anne’s Revenge has yielded nearly a full kit of medical supplies, and Blackbeard reportedly forced the three surgeons to stay aboard the ship when he captured it. There is some debate about how the image of the “disabled pirate” – Stevenson’s Long John Silver and Blind Pew, Barrie’s Captain Hook, etc – began to be common, and the answer is probably tied to the attitudes of the late 18th and overall 19th centuries, which were absolutely disastrous for disabled people. The rise of the asylums began around now, including the notorious Bethlem Royal Hospital (from where we get the word “bedlam.”) Workhouses were built en masse, where the destitute poor and the actually disabled alike were shoved in indiscriminately and treated abominably, and “asylum tourism,” aka go to the madhouse to admire the architecture (and gape at the patients) was a real and horrifying thing. Thus, disability became tied to immorality, weakness, deficiency, and the need to be publically segregated from society (until then, the disabled had been cared for at home – there were a small number of patients in a few private charity hospitals in 1800, and by 1900, there were almost 100,000 in countless workhouses/asylums/general pits of misery). You have Capitalism! (take a shot) and the Industrial Revolution to thank for that. If you couldn’t work in a factory, and you couldn’t earn a wage, and you were a burden on your family who now would be expected to work for an income to support themselves, yep, it was the madhouse for you. And of course, plenty of totally non-mad people got shipped off as well. As I said. Disastrous.

In fact, we have Nellie Bly (aka Elizabeth Jane Cochran, a reporter at the New York World, who I wrote about in my first Timeless historical companion piece) to thank for starting a conversation around asylum reform. In 1887, in a groundbreaking piece of undercover journalism, she got herself committed to Blackwell’s Island asylum in New York and then wrote Ten Days in a Mad-House, revealing both the nightmarish conditions and how every doctor who examined her instantly declared her insane with no hope for recovery. It caused such an uproar that there finally started to be some attempt at oversight and reform for mental hospitals (although there is obviously still a long way to go, yeah – the nineteenth century was The Worst for this.)

So yes. As ever, that was probably more than anyone wanted to know, but the Golden Age of Piracy was particularly focused on social and financial care for members of its community who became disabled, paid pensions, and actually would not have needed to have too many walking wounded seamen/sailors, because there was no incentive to have to keep earning a wage by physical labor when you would be supported from the communal treasure chest. Aka yes, the pirates’ republic of the 17th and 18th centuries was light years more politically and culturally progressive than 21st century America (/stares at the latest Trumpcare bill/Obamacare repeal up in the Senate) and it ain’t close.

[96thdayofrage]

Welcome to Trumpland: Obama’s Legacy

A new gang is in power in Washington. No one quite knows how or why, but the old gang is fighting back with all of its might. A charlatan heads the new gang; he says he opposes everything the old boss did. He says he will set it all right at home and in the global neighborhood, yet his cabinet of consiglieri is stacked with muscular Pentagon Telamon Ajaxes, avaricious bankers and Wall Street vultures, and the mother of all archaic fossil-fuel planetary polluters—Exxon Mobil.

A clutch of customary villains, no less villainous than the ones before. His boss of Labor opposes raising the minimum wage. His boss of Treasury is a former partner of Goldman Sachs, international economic polluters, big time.

In January 2017, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved up its “Doomsday Clock” by thirty seconds to two-and-a-half minutes to midnight, the closest to Armageddon since 1953. The causes, they wrote, were “nuclear volatility” and climate change.  The signs that Trump might reverse the course of doom are unpromising. Rex Tillerson’s appointment means that Exxon-Mobil will function as the virtual Secretary of State. The war state rules: “Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all,” Trump said to Mika Brzesinki in a phone call in December, if we can trust the report by the co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

Meanwhile, during and after the electoral process, the circulatory apparatus of two-gang democracy has shown terminal symptoms of arteriosclerosis. As latent system-dementia becomes overt, the polity has been losing its marbles, too. Two and a half million participated in the Women’s March the day after the inauguration, protesting Trump’s threat to women’s rights—a mass never seen in the streets before to oppose Obama’s killings, which included a disproportionate amount of civilians, many of them women. You know the numbers: 50,000 in Libya; 10,000 in Yemen and Ukraine each; 400,000 in Syria; 2,500 in Gaza, to select the most widely known figures. Add to these casualties the millions of internally displaced and refugees (65 millions in 2017, up from 59 million in 2016), fleeing wars and economic depredation by the knights of Obama’s neo-liberal and neo-colonial ministration.

But we mustn’t begrudge late risers.

Behind the old gang lies a regime of mendacity, a tide of greed, a blight of inequality, a plague of wars, a reign of hypocrisy. Before the new gang, a vision of Pandora, opening wider her nasty box of troubles. More evils released to join the ones already loosed.  The streets are turned into a bedlam of discord, bathos, alarm, and confusion because the forgetful harpy and serial killer Hillary Clinton lost and the crazed buffoon and gaseous “orange” zeppelin won—billionaire Trump, head of an empire of 111 industrial, commercial, and financial corporations.  “Friend of the people.”

I’m not making this up.

The result of the election has been a political cluster bomb.  Bomblets continue to explode in the form of protests and marches and media hysteria. None of these focus on what really matters: the future of humanity on an overheated planet, menaced by America’s systematic drive for space and power over the Earth.

It’s the geopolitics, stupid.

Popular pandemonium exploded over the merits and demerits of two evils. How can a polity be brought so low? The two evils are one.  In the poisonous air, I hear the echo of Mark Twain’s sardonic rewrite of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” to denounce his own time’s descent into the moral quagmire of imperialism in the Spanish-American War of 1898:

Mine eyes have seen the orgy of the launching of the sword He is searching out the hoardings where the strangers’ wealth is stored He has loosed his fateful lightning, and with woe and death has scored His lust is marching on.

It would be a relief to hear a country united in such a challenging chorus accusing officials’ and backers’ domestic and foreign violence. But the night is not yet dark enough for the owl of Minerva to begin her flight and reveal the gangs’ collective abuses of our trust in their vainglorious myths. We are stranded on the “darkling plane,” in a greyness which the powers that deny us understanding are painting with still more grey. We cannot read the past, so we cannot move into the future.  We sense what we think we know is not what is. We are not even sure we are living in the present.

How can such a suspension of time not make one nauseous?

“The Nausea is not within me . . . I feel it out there . . . I am within it.” Just so Racontin, the protagonist of Jean Paul Sartre’s novel, Nausea, explains the physical revulsion he felt on touching reality around him—a chair, a person, a work of art. But where is the rot? “I feel it out there in the wall, in the suspenders, everywhere around me.” What does it look like? “A monster? A giant carapace? Sunk in the mud? A dozen pairs of claws or fins laboring slowly in the slime? The monster rises. At the bottom of the water.”

Is “Trump” Grendl’s new name? In the shock of the weeks before the inauguration, the old gang’s media minstrels indeed decried that a monster had been loosed from the slime of the White Lagoon peopled by racists voting in the rustic hinterlands—the Rustofarians.  The minstrels spread urban panic. The crowds roared: bugger the elections; have a vote recount; abolish the Electoral College; declare the Trump unfit. This monster, about to squat in an oval-shaped room, like so many elect before him, was supposed to have been Hillary Clinton.

But she morphed into him.

Her gang pointed the finger at Russia. It was Russia brought this ill wind, not the foulness of the Clinton clan, not the bloodlust of the Obama years, not the political slaughter of the lymphatic social democrat, Bernie Sanders, who could have saved the gang’s ass. Given it four more years of failing but respectable life. It was Russia that wove the web of fate—Russia “not born of woman,” unnatural, evil, stained with the original sin of communism, the mark of Cain. Russia that brought “great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill” and cut down the Lady Queen of Chaos in the prime of her ascendancy to Empress of a world, large swathes of which she had drained of blood and was herself  “in blood stepped so far, that should [she] wade no more, returning were as tedious as go over”

But she was left there, in blood’s midstream, and they rued.

The entire gang world—the Heimat of the globalist “international community”—went into a chorus of shrieking laments. The political eunuchs in Europe cried along with their American masters. Here was the upstart presidential mirror in which the Heimat of the good and the great could no longer admire itself enlarged, greater, finer, more humanitarian than his crude illiberal vulgarity would now reflect back. The old gang’s bad-faith had become unsustainable. Their self-image, propped up by deceptive ideological claptrap—“liberal values”—was shattered. What of the solemnity of slogans—“civil society,” rule of law, dedication to universal principles, respect for identities, protection of ethnic minorities, zeal for religious freedoms? What of the pompous phrases, the lubrications of exalted promises? All gone into the vortex of the philistine stupidity of the deplorable masses and their despotic ballot box. Nothing to hear but the howling of an evil new wind.

The hearing of which was new to them.

Before Trump emerged from the electoral swamp the winner, everything already had been the contrary of everything. And became more so. The liberation of 100,000 civilians in Aleppo in December 2016 by the Syrian Arab Army and the Russian allies from four years of Western-backed terror, they called “a war crime.” The separation of Crimeans from Ukraine by popular referendum (over 90% in favor) joining Russia, they called “Russian aggression.”  The US/EU coup in Ukraine (2013-14), planned and executed by the Obama Neo-con State Department and costing $5 billion dollars, substituting an elected government by a junta of Neo-Nazi ministers and officials, they called the return of  “democracy to Ukraine.”  The fascism, now attributed to Trump as a novelty, was hiding in plain sight in Obama’s reign of illegal wars, regime changes, ubiquitous sanctions, and terror proxy armies, studiously ignored or fictionalized by the scribbler-courtiers in the media, the punditry, think-tanks, foundations, and officialdom.

These “fixers” reversed cause and effect. They obscured the fact that Crimea’s separation from Ukraine was the effect of the US-coup in Kiev. They used it as the cause for tightening NATO’s military noose around Russia, including with offensive missiles, called “defensive.”  Thus the effect of American regime-change in Ukraine became the cause of American militarization of Central and Eastern Europe. With objective Russia. This militarization against the constructed phantom of Russian aggression goes by the grand name of Atlantic Resolve 2017, which the US Department of Defense justifies on its website in these terms:

The United States is demonstrating its continued commitment to collective security through a series of actions designed to reassure NATO allies and partners of America’s dedication to enduring peace and stability in the region in light of the Russian intervention in Ukraine (emphasis mine).

That bullhorn of the military-industrial complex, John McCain, turned reality upside down in an instruction to the new gang for continuing the sanction regime against Russia:

“In just the last three years under Vladimir Putin, Russia has invaded Ukraine, annexed Crimea, threatened NATO allies, and intervened militarily in Syria, leaving a trail of death, destruction, and broken promises in his wake.”

In a rational world, the bulk of this accusation would be lobbed at the planners in Obama’s neo-liberal-neo-con gang, but no imperial ego can admit being morally in the wrong.  It dresses its violence in cloth of gold, spun obligingly by the official media. The bloody rags of responsibility are tossed onto someone else, who must be demonized, preferably by a media liberal. Rachel Maddow, for example,  graduated as an instant Sovietologist in her incendiary rant linking Putin’s capitalist Russia to Stalin’s socialist USSR. Tell me what rallies the American public—including and especially the liberals–to the side of the Star and Stripes more precipitously than raising the communist ghost?

The manipulation of news and the distortion of reality are the most powerful weapons in the hands of power.  They can make a whole reality disappear. Yemen’s, for example.  The Saudi “coalition,” backed by the US and Britain, began bombing Yemen on 23 March 2015. Since then, 3.2 million Yemenis have been displaced, half the people suffer from malnutrition, 10,000 civilians have been killed (that’s 13 civilians per day), 2 million youngsters cannot attend school, nearly 15 million people (55 percent children) have no access to basic medical care.

Yet, we heard nothing of this immense suffering. The US and Britain, in fact, profited from the war in Yemen. The Obama administration sold on the world’s weapon market $200 billion worth of arms, the largest US weapons’ sale since WW II–over $100 billion to Saudi Arabia alone. Britain’s contribution to Saudi Arabia’s arsenal was $3.2 billion in the last year alone. The United States and Britain continue to provide intelligence and logistical support to the Saudi-led coalition, which intervened on the side of Yemeni President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who fled to Saudi Arabia in the midst of his people’s civil war.

But, throughout the Obama years, all was quiet on the Yemeni front in officialdom and its media mouthpiece over the deliberate targeting of vital civilian infrastructure, schools and hospitals, weddings and funerals. At a funeral in Sana, last October, a Saudi airstrike killed 114 civilians.  Before the bombing of Yemen began, the Obama gang imposed sanctions and blockaded Yemen—all without a Security Council resolution or any pretense of adhering to international law. The director of Yemen’s Save the Children recently remarked:

“Even before the war tens of thousands of Yemeni children were dying of preventable causes. But now, the situation is much worse and an estimated 1,000 children are dying every week from preventable killers like diarrhea, malnutrition and respiratory tract infections.”

In foreign policy, this “racist” is no different from the “post-racist.”  Trump’s “defense” planners are putting Yemen on the media map but only to use it as a cudgel to beat Iran with. On Yemen, they are reported as setting to step up Obama’s infamous drone “kill list,” ramping up the US role in the civil war, and looking to engage more directly.  Taking Yemen as an example, it becomes clear that both the liberal and the illiberal president regard the business of war a national industry. Obama’s last words in office exalted the assumed invincibility of America’s military prowess.  On Dec 22, Trump posted on Twitter, “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”

There will be no retrenchment of US belligerence under Trump. In the first aftermath of his inauguration, President Trump directed Defense Secretary James Mattis to

“Initiate a new Nuclear Posture Review to ensure that the United States’ nuclear deterrent is modern, robust, flexible, resilient, ready, and appropriately tailored to deter 21st-century threats and reassure our allies.”

On his first visit to the Pentagon, the president signed an executive action calling for expansion of the US military, including its nuclear arsenal to be ready for war with its “near competitors,” understood as Russia and China. “I am signing an executive action to begin a great rebuilding of the armed services of the United States,” he told the Pentagon during the signing.

Thus was the military-industrial complex pacified for losing their favorite candidate, Hillary Clinton.  Reported by the New York Times,

the Pentagon itself, anticipating Trump’s directive to Mattis and his executive action, had been preparing “classified options” to expand the use of Special Operations forces, raising the troop level in Iraq and Syria, and expecting the White House to delegate more authority to the Pentagon and field commanders. The “classified options” included arming the Syrian Kurds for the expected battle for Raqqa, in an obvious scheme to drive a wedge between Turkey and Russia in their belated rapprochement over “regime change” in Syria.

There are indications that, contrary to Trump’s stated aversion to “regime change,” Iran will become the new Syria. In the wake of Iran’s test of a medium-range ballistic missile on January 30, National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, has begun a campaign of verbal belligerence, disinformation, and outright lies against Iran. In a statement Flynn said that

“The recent ballistic missile launch is . . . in defiance of UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which calls upon Iran not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology.”

This is a gross distortion of the truth. UN Security Council Resolution 2231 bans Iran from developing missiles capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, but the resolution states no provision preventing Iran from developing defensive capability. The missile tested on January 30 had no capacity for carrying a nuclear warhead; Iran has not violated Resolution 2231.

Flynn’s misrepresentation of Iran’s missile test hums the tune of the fake threat concocted by the Bush neo-cons on the run-up to the fatal invasion of Iraq in 2003 that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. That lie cost Iraq one million dead, the drawing and quartering of Iraq’s political integrity, internal and external refugees by the millions.  Ominously, Flynn ends his statement with a threat, “As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice.” On cue, came the sanctions targeting 25 individuals and businesses connected to Iran’s missile program, including Chinese persons and companies.

In conclusion, I fail to see the reasons for the gang warfare in DC. Long-standing objectives appear to be shared: the global dominance of the United States by economic and military means. What seems to be the bone of contention is the method of dominating American public opinion. The war is over rhetoric: liberal versus populist “values.” Thus they are fighting over control of the public’s mind. It should not be surrendered to either persuasion. Perhaps the only silver lining in the Trump ascension is the potential empowerment and resurgence of popular resistance.

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