#deconstructing American government

[socialjusticeinamerica]

Most of them work for one of Felon Musk’s companies but at least one was installed by right-wing German born oligarch Peter Thiel. One of them was hired after winning a “hackathon” contest! muskrat is now saying he re-hired the anti-Indian racist one that resigned.

🤬🤬🤬

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

Children who worked as software engineers and have no idea what government agencies do or why they do it.

🖕🖕🖕

“Their obsessions with running our agency ‘like a business’ is nothing more than a reckless corporate takeover that disregards the critical role we play in serving the public,” the employee said.”

[cryptotheism]

Whats the deal with Sorkin? I never watched West Wing, but it sounds like some kind of liberal political fantasy. What makes it so screwy?

People far smarter than me have deconstructed what is so poisonous about The West Wing.

It presents a fantasy where centrist liberals are able to fix everything about the American government, simply by giving impassioned speeches where they destroy their enemies with facts and logic. At which point, the enemies graciously give up and set aside their fangs. They realize they have been defeated in the marketplace of ideas. They were factually incorrect, the foundations of their ideology have been shaken. Has it all been for naught? Yes. Yes it has.

[fairuzfan]

AMAZING article about what it means to participate in anti-Zionism work both online and in person.

If your anti-zionism does not in any way acknowledge that it is a way of thought and practice led by and for Palestinians, then you need to reevaluate your "anti-zionism" label.

Some passages that felt especially relevant to tumblr:

If we accept, as those with even the most rudimentary understanding of history do, that zionism is an ongoing process of settler-colonialism, then the undoing of zionism requires anti-zionism, which should be understood as a process of decolonisation. Anti-zionism as a decolonial ideology then becomes rightly situated as an indigenous liberation movement. The resulting implication is two-fold. First, decolonial organising requires that we extract ourselves from the limitations of existing structures of power and knowledge and imagine a new, just world. Second, this understanding clarifies that the caretakers of anti-zionist thought are indigenous communities resisting colonial erasure, and it is from this analysis that the strategies, modes, and goals of decolonial praxis should flow. In simpler terms: Palestinians committed to decolonisation, not Western-based NGOs, are the primary authors of anti-zionist thought. We write this as a Palestinian and a Palestinian-American who live and work in Palestine, and have seen the impact of so-called ‘Western values’ and how the centring of the ‘human rights’ paradigm disrupts real decolonial efforts in Palestine and abroad. This is carried out in favour of maintaining the status quo and gaining proximity to power, using our slogans emptied of Palestinian historical analysis.

Anti-zionist organising is not a new notion, but until now the use of the term in organising circles has been mired with misunderstandings, vague definitions, or minimised outright. Some have incorrectly described anti-zionism as amounting to activities or thought limited to critiques of the present Israeli government – this is a dangerous misrepresentation. Understanding anti-zionism as decolonisation requires the articulation of a political movement with material, articulated goals: the restitution of ancestral territories and upholding the inviolable principle of indigenous repatriation and through the right of return, coupled with the deconstruction of zionist structures and the reconstitution of governing frameworks that are conceived, directed, and implemented by Palestinians.  Anti-zionism illuminates the necessity to return power to the indigenous community and the need for frameworks of justice and accountability for the settler communities that have waged a bloody, unrelenting hundred-year war on the people of Palestine. It means that anti-zionism is much more than a slogan. 

[...]

While our collective imaginations have not fully articulated what a liberated and decolonised Palestine looks like, the rough contours have been laid out repeatedly. Ask any Palestinian refugee displaced from Haifa, the lands of Sheikh Muwannis, or Deir Yassin – they will tell that a decolonised Palestine is, at a minimum, the right of Palestinians’ return to an autonomous political unit from the river to the sea. When self-proclaimed ‘anti-zionists’ use rhetoric like ‘Israel-Palestine’ – or worse, ‘Palestine-Israel’ – we wonder: where do you think ‘Israel’ exists? On which land does it lay, if not Palestine? This is nothing more than an attempt to legitimise a colonial state; the name you are looking for is Palestine – no hyphen required. At a minimum, anti-zionist formations should cut out language that forces upon Palestinians and non-Palestinian allies the violence of colonial theft. 

[...]

The common choice to centre the Oslo Accords, international humanitarian law, and the human rights paradigm over socio-historical Palestinian realities not only limits our analysis and political interventions; it restricts our imagination of what kind of future Palestinians deserve, sidelining questions of decolonization to convince us that it is the new, bad settlers in the West Bank who are the source of violence. Legitimate settlers, who reside within the bounds of Palestinian geographies stolen in 1948 like Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem, are different within this narrative. Like Breaking the Silence, they can be enlightened by learning the error of colonial violence carried out in service of the bad settlers. They can supposedly even be our solidarity partners – all without having to sacrifice a crumb of colonial privilege or denounce pre-1967 zionist violence in any of its cruel manifestations. As a result of this course of thought, solidarity organisations often showcase particular Israelis – those who renounce state violence in service of the bad settlers and their ongoing colonisation of the West Bank – in roles as professionals and peacemakers, positioning them on an equal intellectual, moral, or class footing with Palestinians. There is no recognition of the inherent imbalance of power between these Israelis and the Palestinians they purport to be in solidarity with – stripping away their settler status. The settler is taken out of the historical-political context which afforded them privileged status on stolen land, and is given the power to delineate the Palestinian experience. This is part of the historical occlusion of the zionist narrative, overlooking the context of settler-colonialism to read the settler as an individual, and omitting their class status as a settler. 

It is essential to note that Palestinians have never rejected Jewish indigeneity in Palestine. However, the liberation movement has differentiated between zionist settlers and Jewish natives. Palestinians have established a clear and rational framework for this distinction, like in the Thawabet, the National Charter of Palestine from 1968. Article 6 states, ‘The Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion will be considered Palestinians.’ When individuals misread ‘decolonisation’ as ‘the mass killing or expulsion of Jews,’ it is often a reflection of their own entanglement in colonialism or a result of zionist propaganda. Perpetuating this rhetoric is a deliberate misinterpretation of Palestinian thought, which has maintained this position over a century of indigenous organising.  Even after 100 years of enduring ethnic cleansing, whole communities bombed and entire family lines erased, Palestinians have never, as a collective, called for the mass killing of Jews or Israelis. Anti-zionism cannot shy away from employing the historical-political definitions of ‘settler’ and ‘indigenous’ in their discourse to confront ahistorical readings of Palestinian decolonial thought and zionist propaganda. 

[...]

In the context of the United States, the most threatening zionist institutions are the entrenched political parties which function to maintain the status quo of the American empire, not Hillel groups on university campuses or even Christian zionist churches. While the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) engage in forms of violence that suppress Palestinian liberation and must not be minimised, it is crucial to recognise that the most consequential institutions in the context of settler-colonialism are not exclusively Jewish in their orientation or representation: the Republican and Democratic Party in the United States do arguably more to manufacture public consent for the slaughtering of Palestinians than the ADL and AIPAC combined. Even the Progressive Caucus and the majority of ‘The Squad’ are guilty of this.

Leila Shomali and Lara Kilani

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Overkill. http://Newsday.com/matt :: Matt Davies

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 13, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Nov 14, 2024

Republican senators today elected John Thune of South Dakota to be the next Senate majority leader. Trump and MAGA Republicans had put a great deal of pressure on the senators to back Florida senator Rick Scott, but he marshaled fewer votes than either Thune or John Cornyn of Texas, both of whom were seen as establishment figures in the mold of the Republican senators’ current leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Scott lost on the first vote. The fact that the vote was secret likely helped Thune’s candidacy. Senators could vote without fear of retaliation. 

The rift between the pre-2016 leaders of the Republican Party and the MAGA Republicans is still obvious, and Trump’s reliance on Elon Musk and his stated goal of deconstructing the American government could make it wider. 

Republican establishment leaders have always wanted to dismantle the New Deal state that began under Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and continued under Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower and presidents of both parties until 1981. But they have never wanted to dismantle the rule of law on which the United States is founded or the international rules-based order on which foreign trade depends. Aside from moral and intellectual principles, the rule of law is the foundation on which the security of property rests: there is a reason that foreign oligarchs park their money in democracies. And it is the international rules-based order that protects the freedom of the seas on which the movement of container ships, for example, depends.

Trump has made it clear that his goal for a second term is to toss overboard the rule of law and the international rules-based order, instead turning the U.S. government into a vehicle for his own revenge and forging individual alliances with autocratic rulers like Russian president Vladimir Putin. 

He has begun moving to  put into power individuals whose qualifications are their willingness to do as Trump demands, like New York representative Elise Stefanik, whom he has tapped to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, or Florida senator Marco Rubio, who Trump said today would be his nominee for secretary of state. 

Alongside his choice of loyalists who will do as he says, Trump has also tapped people who will push his war on his cultural enemies forward, like anti-immigrant ideologue Stephen Miller, who will become his deputy chief of staff and a homeland security advisor. Today, Trump added to that list by saying he plans to nominate Florida representative Matt Gaetz, who has been an attack dog for Trump, to become attorney general.

Trump’s statement tapping Gaetz for attorney general came after Senate Republicans rejected Scott, and appears to be a deliberate challenge to Republican senators that they get in line. In his announcement, Trump highlighted that Gaetz had played “a key role in defeating the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax.” 

But establishment Republican leaders understand that some of our core institutions cannot survive MAGA’s desire to turn the government into a vehicle for culture war vengeance. 

Gaetz is a deeply problematic pick for AG. A report from the House Ethics Committee investigating allegations of drug use and sex with a minor was due to be released in days. Although he was reelected just last week, Gaetz resigned immediately after Trump said he would nominate him, thus short-circuiting the release of the report. Last year, Republican senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma told CNN that “we had all seen the videos he was showing on the House floor, that all of us had walked away, of the girls that he had slept with. He would brag about how he would crush [erectile dysfunction] medicine and chase it with an energy drink so he could go all night." 

While South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham said he would be willing to agree to the appointment, other Republican senators drew a line. “I was shocked by the announcement —that shows why the advise and consent process is so important,” Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) said. “I’m sure that there will be a lot of questions raised at his hearing.” Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) was blunt: “I don’t think he’s a serious candidate.”

If the idea of putting Gaetz in charge of the country’s laws alarmed Republicans concerned about domestic affairs, Trump’s pick of the inexperienced and extremist Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth to take over the Department of Defense was a clarion call for anyone concerned about perpetuating the global strength of the U.S. The secretary of defense oversees a budget of more than $800 billion and about 1.3 million active-duty troops, with another 1.4 million in the National Guard and employed in Reserves and civilian positions.

The secretary of defense also has access to the nuclear command-and-control procedure. Over his nomination, too, Republican senators expressed concern.

While Trump is claiming a mandate to do as he wishes with the government, Republicans interested in their own political future are likely noting that he actually won the election by a smaller margin than President Joe Biden won in 2020, despite a global rejection of incumbents this year. And he won not by picking up large numbers of new voters—it appears he lost voters—but because Democratic voters of color dropped out, perhaps reflecting the new voter suppression laws put into place since 2021.

Then, too, Trump remains old and mentally slipping, and he is increasingly isolated as people fight over the power he has brought within their grasp. Today his wife, Melania, declined the traditional invitation from First Lady Jill Biden for tea at the White House and suggested she will not be returning to the presidential mansion with her husband. It is not clear either that Trump will be able to control the scrabbling for power over the party by those he has brought into the executive branch, or that he has much to offer elected Republicans who no longer need his voters, suggesting that Congress could reassert its power.  

Falling into line behind Trump at this point is not necessarily a good move for a Republican interested in a future political career. 

Today the Republicans are projected to take control of the House of Representatives, giving the party control of the House, the Senate, and the presidency, as well as the Supreme Court. But as the downballot races last week show, MAGA policies remain unpopular, and the Republican margin in the House will be small. In the last Congress, MAGA loyalists were unable to get the votes they needed from other Republicans to impose Trump’s culture war policies, creating gridlock and a deeply divided Republican conference. 

The gulf between Trump’s promises to slash the government and voters’ actual support for government programs is not going to make the Republicans’ job easier. Conservative pundit George Will wrote today that “the world’s richest person is about to receive a free public education,” suggesting Elon Musk, who has emerged as the shadow president, will find his plans to cut the government difficult to enact as elected officials reject cuts to programs their constituents like. 

Musk’s vow to cut “at least” $2 trillion from federal spending, Will notes, will run up against reality in a hurry. Of the $6.75 trillion fiscal 2024 spending, debt service makes up 13.1%; defense—which Trump wants to increase—is 12.9%. Entitlements, primarily Social Security and Medicare, account for 34.6%, and while the Republican Study Group has called for cuts to them, Trump said during the campaign, at least, that they would not be cut. 

So Musk has said he would cut about 30% of the total budget from about 40% of it. Will points out that Trump is hardly the first president to vow dramatic cuts. Notably, Ronald Reagan appointed J. Peter Grace, an entrepreneur, to make government “more responsive to the wishes of the people” after voters had elected Reagan on a platform of cutting government. Grace’s commission made 2,478 recommendations but quickly found that every lawmaker liked cuts to someone else’s district but not their own.  

Will notes that a possible outcome of the Trump chaos might be to check the modern movement toward executive power, inducing Congress to recapture some of the power it has ceded to the president in order to restore the stability businessmen prefer.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was himself a wealthy man, and in the 1930s he tried to explain to angry critics on the right that his efforts to address the nation’s inequalities were not an attack on American capitalism, but rather an attempt to save it from the communism or fascism that would destroy the rule of law. 

“I want to save our system, the capitalistic system,” FDR wrote to a friend in 1935. “[T]o save it is to give some heed to world thought of today.” 

The protections of the system FDR ushered in—the banking and equities regulation that killed crony finance, for example—are now under attack by the very sort of movement he warned against. Whether today’s lawmakers are as willing as their predecessors were to stand against that movement remains unclear, especially as Trump tries to bring lawmakers to heel, but Thune’s victory in the Senate today and the widespread Republican outrage over Trump’s appointment of Gaetz and Hegseth are hopeful signs. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[constantly-chaotic-and-confused]

It bugs me so much when people critique the unrealistic politics in Red White and Royal Blue as like a flaw of the books like just think about it.

With a romcom, literally the whole point is to put people’s wildly unrealistic romantic and sexual fantasies on screen, like the literal stuff you’d dream about at night, like what if my boss is going to be deported and I have to fake an engagement and then fall in love with her for real, what if my blind date under my friend’s name turns out to be the mega-rich owner of the company where I work, what if I’m a famous actress one day and an average guy who is also Hugh Grant spills orange juice on me and we fall in love like seriously the whole point is that’s it unrealistic and no one says anything.

And then we’ve got coming of age books which are also wildly unrealistic, like I’m thinking dystopia - 16 - year - old - single-handedly -takes -down - oppressive - government - regime sort of unrealistic, but we all eat it up cos 16 year old us would idealistically dream about single-handedly saving the world.

And all Casey does is make a book with both romantic fantasies and political fantasies and suddenly everyone says it’s unrealistic. Like cmon how is reading that one 21 year old aspiring politician single handedly deconstructs deeply entrenched American inequalities with the power of idealism and family and love any less catharticly unrealistic than ur average romcom plot. Like I’m sorry but I loved the politics, in the exact same way I loved the romance.

[the-desolated-quill]

It’s hard not to look at Captain America: Brave New World and not be incredibly angry at the squandered opportunity here.

Captain America was always propaganda. That’s why the comic was created in the first place back in the 40s, and it’s very much a reflection of the cultural attitudes of the time. The clever thing about the films is that they serve as a deconstruction of that propaganda. They deliberately make a distinction between Captain America; the symbol, and Captain America; the man. In all three films, Steve Rogers is expected to represent the interests of America, and in every single film he goes against that. He disobeys his commanding officer in order to save Bucky and the Howling Commandos from the HYDRA camps. He disobeys SHIELD when he finds out they’ve been infiltrated by Nazis and threaten the freedoms of the American people. He goes against the government when the Sokovia Accords come into effect. Steve Rogers explicitly and unambiguously rejects the idea that he is America’s mascot and must obey orders without question. He will always stand up and do the right thing, even if the right thing isn’t always the popular thing. It all comes back to what Dr Erskine said to him in the first movie. He’s not looking for a perfect soldier, but a good man. A perfect soldier doesn’t question. A perfect soldier represents his country regardless of his own beliefs. Red Skull is a perfect soldier. He’s also an elitist, egomaniacal tyrant. Winter Soldier is a perfect soldier. He’s also a brainwashed sleeper agent with no free will. Captain America is not a perfect soldier. But he is a good man.

Which is what makes Sam Wilson as the new Captain America so interesting. As an Africa American, he knows first hand what his country has done to people who look like him. He knows what his country historically represented to people like him. So what does that mean to suddenly be expected to represent that same country, and all its history of racism and discrimination along with it? Who is Sam Wilson? Is he a perfect soldier? Or a good man? In the eyes of America, what do those things even mean? There’s so much potential there for interesting social commentary and character exploration. Unfortunately this is the MCU, where interesting social commentary and character exploration has fallen by the wayside in recent years.

The irony is reactionary morons will reject this film for being ‘woke’ and ‘political’. When in reality, from what I’ve seen, this is going to be one of the most toothless and uninspired films in the whole franchise. It’s such a shame.

[coquettemouse]

american people or people who spend a lot of time with other american people are so steeped in eugenicist ideas that they don't even realize that certain thoughts of theirs are eugenicist. Anti-racism is not "let's fight for things to change but using the government's logic" anti-racism fight must begin by deconstructing your current ideas of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender norms. You ain't anti-racist until you break the pre-defined stereotypes of what defines someone as who they are. Because race is a racist idea to dehumanize, separate and power over people.

[darkmaga-returns]

USAID is a CIA Surrogate

A former USAID director, John Gilligan, admitted that USAID was "infiltrated from top to bottom with CIA people." Gilligan explained that "the idea was to plant operatives in every kind of activity we had overseas; government, volunteer, religious, every kind." Given that USAID is widely believed and reported to be infiltrated by CIA personnel, and to function essentially as an arm of the CIA, it is ironic that USAID was established by President John F. Kennedy on November 3, 1961, through the signing of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. Kennedy aimed to create a more efficient way to counter Soviet influence abroad through foreign assistance, seeing the State Department as too bureaucratic to accomplish this task efficiently.

When American humanitarian groups receive funds from USAID, their reports made the groups they assisted legible to USAID, and through USAID, this information is passed along to the CIA. Father Cotton, a missionary who became curious about the sources of mission work, described USAID as "the CIA'S little sister", and worried that those working on humanitarian and assistance projects were being "plugged into an information network that starts with the U.S. government and to which the CIA is connected". Cotter also understood that the CIA valued missionaries because, like anthropologists, they tended to "spend years working with grass-roots people and helping the unfortunates among them, they win trust and confidence. People will tell them about their hopes and fears, about village happenings, and about whatever there is of interest. They learn who are the most promising leaders, what are the region's problems, and they are often given access to people and areas closed to most outsiders. This is the information wanted by the CIA, and wanted in steadily flowing streams".

[progressivemillennial]

Project 2025 Revisited, Part 2: Notable Quotes

As noted in Part 1, I spent time in November reviewing Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership and compiled a summary and quotes for my community. My hope is to share this information now to help make sense of the Trump presidency so far and to help us understand what might be coming in the future.

Many have credulously believed that Donald Trump did not know about Project 2025. What I'm hoping to convey with today's and tomorrow's quotes is that, regardless of what Trump knew or didn't know, we can see in the administration's actions a clear connection to many of the priorities of the Mandate for Leadership. This makes sense because the Trump administration is ideologically aligned with many of the folks and organizations who contributed to Project 2025.

Without further ado, please find below a selection of quotes from the Mandate for Leadership, bold text added by me for emphasis:

Administrative State 1. "When it comes to ensuring that freedom can flourish, nothing is more important than deconstructing the centralized administrative state."

Public Education 1. "The new Administration must end the prior Administration’s abuse of the agency’s payment pause and HEA loan forgiveness programs, including borrower defense to repayment, closed school discharge, and Public Service Loan Forgiveness."

2. "Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated."

Race 1. “Treat the participation in any critical race theory or DEI initiative, without objecting on constitutional or moral grounds, as per se grounds for termination of employment.”

Climate Change 1. “Climate-change research should be disbanded. … The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be broken up and downsized. … [The Office of Air and Radiation] … is the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism.”

Multiple Topics 1. "The noxious tenets of 'critical race theory' and 'gender ideology' should be excised from curricula in every public school in the country."

2. "The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion, gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists."

3. "Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered."

4. “The next Administration will face a significant challenge in unwinding policies and procedures that are used to advance radical gender, racial, and equity initiatives under the banner of science. Similarly, the Biden Administration’s climate fanaticism will need a whole-of-government unwinding.”

5. “No public education employee or contractor shall use a name to address a student other than the name listed on a student’s birth certificate, without the written permission of a student’s parents or guardians. No public education employee or contractor shall use a pronoun in addressing a student that is different from that student’s biological sex without the written permission of a student’s parents or guardians. No public institution may require an education employee or contractor to use a pronoun that does not match a person’s biological sex if contrary to the employee’s or contractor’s religious or moral convictions.”

6. “Families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society. … The male–female dyad is essential to human nature and … every child has a right to a mother and father.”  

[spiritofthemountainnaturephoto]

I'm sick to my stomach thinking over the fact we as the American people could lose our public lands, national parks and monuments. We would lose so many beautiful natural areas, wildlife and history. We could lose places to hike, hunt and fish.

He was putting things in motion before and he will do it again.

"The Trump administration is responsible for the largest reduction in protected public lands in history, a study finds.

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon coined the term “deconstruction of the administrative state,” to describe efforts to take power away from the federal government and allow business a freer hand in development. Nowhere is that policy being carried out more systematically than in the Trump administration’s actions on public lands, where the businesses seeking that freer hand are primarily the oil and gas extraction, logging, and mining industries.

Republicans in Western states hoped would be a new effort to take over control of federal lands, and introduced a bill to sell some 3.3 million public land acres out of federal hands."

https://e360.yale.edu/features/open-for-business-the-trump-revolution-on-public-lands

Please share so that more people can be aware for what is to come. We need to keep an eye on the Trump administration so that we don't lose our American right to hike, hunt and fish on OUR public lands!

[mariacallous]

Today, the flames of violent nationalism still flicker in the Balkans. Revisionist grievances and autocratic instincts animate leaders in Turkey and Hungary. The fallout from the 2009 European debt crisis and the years of hardship and austerity that followed showed that resentment of German influence—in this case, economic influence—is never deeply buried. Even today, as Putin gives European states every reason to work together, tensions between Ukraine and Poland or between France and Germany occasionally flare.

There are worrying political trends, as well. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has spent years deconstructing Hungarian democracy and touting the rise of the “illiberal state.” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is carrying out a similar project in his country. Parties such as the National Rally in France are rising in the polls and trafficking in a hard-edged nationalism that can easily turn into zero-sum geopolitical thinking, with centuries of historical grievances ready to be awakened. The far-right Alternative for Germany remains a political contender even as it becomes more extreme. The triumph of these movements might well be aided by a Russia assiduously waging political warfare, all too eager to set European states against one another.

A fractured Europe gripped by its ancient demons is a nightmare scenario, and nightmares usually don’t come true. But what is crucial to understand is that a post-American Europe would be fundamentally unlike the Europe we have come to know. The geopolitical shock absorbers provided by U.S. power and its umbrella over Europe will be gone. The destabilizing uncertainty over status and security will return. Countries will no longer feel so confident that they can ensure their survival without resorting to the behavior—the military buildups, the intense rivalries—that characterized earlier eras. Today’s Europe is the product of a historically unique, unprecedented configuration of power and influence created by the United States. Can we really be so sure that the bad old ways won’t reassert themselves once the very safeguards that have suppressed them for 75 years are withdrawn?

Don���t make the mistake of thinking that Europe’s transformation into today’s peaceful EU can never be undone. After all, Europe experienced stretches of relative peace before 1945—in the decades after Napoleon’s defeat, for instance—only for that peace to collapse once the balance of power shifted. And don’t think that tragedy can’t befall a continent that seems so enlightened: The history of Europe, prior to U.S. engagement, was the history of the world’s most economically advanced, most thoroughly modern continent repeatedly tearing itself to shreds. Indeed, if there is a lesson from Europe’s past, it is that the descent can come sooner and be steeper than currently seems possible to imagine.

In the 1920s, the forces of liberalism seemed ascendant: British writer James Bryce hailed the “universal acceptance of democracy as the normal and natural form of government.” The newly founded League of Nations was offering novel mechanisms for crisis management. Countries were slashing their militaries and settling outstanding grievances from World War I. Just a decade later, it was the forces of fascism that had the momentum as the continent careened toward another world war. Europe’s own history is testament to how quickly and completely things can all fall apart.

America Firsters may think that the United States can have all the benefits of a stable Europe without paying any of the costs. In reality, their policies risk reminding us that Europe has a far nastier historical norm. That would be a calamity—and not just for Europe. A weaker, more fragmented Europe would make it harder for the democratic world to cope with challenges from Russia, China, or Iran. A violent, hypercompetitive Europe could cause fallout on a global scale.

If Europe has benefited from being part of a thriving liberal order in recent decades, that liberal order has benefited from having a peaceful, gradually expanding EU at its core. If Europe turns dark and vicious again, it might once more export its conflicts to the world. On the day that the United States retreats across the Atlantic, it will be placing far more than the future of Europe at risk.

Trump’s Return Would Transform Europe

[anarchistfrogposting]

Genuine question. How does an anarchist state deal with people who want to kill for fun? Do we just let them, because to have rules is to oppose ever single anarchist value, or do we stop them because true anarchism like that would be the death of humanity?

It’s a question that anarchists get a lot. I’ll say first and foremost that, like any other field I personally am not involved in the organisation of, public safety is better left to professionals who understand its machinations (and hence how to deconstruct its inherent hierarchies) better than myself (and no, I don’t mean the police).

I’ll also posit that anarchist society is absolutely not founded on the concept of an absence of rules, just an absence of hierarchical (as opposed to self-) government. I don’t blame you for thinking that; it’s a very common perception of anarchism, especially considering the associations people tend to form with the word anarchism and anarchy in modern lexicon.

It’s true that sometimes, somehow, people end up in a path of life wherein they would do something as heinous as kill for fun, or other various unjust reasons.

I’d first like to posit that such people and situations, whilst sensationalised, are in fact pretty rare.

But they might still exist, so what do we do about them? The first step, like in much anarchist praxis, is to shift perceptions and culture. Whilst it’s true that humans love gossip, I would also posit that much of the culture around serial murders and the like exists because media companies exaggerate and glamorise murder in order to grab clicks/interactions/readers. This is most stark, for example, in the cycle of American gun violence.

Familial units would be significantly less isolated as a result of their integration into their communities, meaning the cycles and chains of domestic abuse that often lead to the proliferation of those violent tendencies would be much less common. It’s worth remembering that capitalism’s rise came hand in hand with the breakdown in communities; that it had to in order to succeed.

But let’s say the revolution has happened, culture has shifted and yet there’s still mass and serial murderers out and about. What do we do about it?

Community self government also means community self defence. On a voluntary basis, that means that communities can set up security measures like communal watches, (extensively trained, cyclically employable and imminently accountable and recallable) guards, and even detainment revolving around the attempted reformation and treatment of those individuals.

Fundamentally, detainment exists as a means to reform individuals, and the workers in those facilities would all receive training and all be fully accountable and recallable to and by their communities. Accountability measures include enforcing transparency and setting up dual power that includes the prisoners themselves, the communities concerned with those facilities, and the staff volunteering in it.

This approach is contentious, and different anarchists have different opinions on the most effective strategies. A great example of a leading prison abolitionist is Angela Davis, if you’re interested in learning more about systems of justice outside of imprisonment.

Keep sending in your questions! I’ll do my best to answer (as long as you’re asking in good faith!) no (genuine) question is too silly.

[bookletreview]

When it comes to beginning a book review blog, I initially struggled with choosing the first book to speak about. However, it became obvious there was no other choice but Angela Davis’ Women, Race & Class. I first read it when I was fourteen years old, and it combined my love of reading with social justice. 

A brief bit on Angela Davis: She was born in Alabama in 1944. Davis is an American Marxist and feminist political activist, writer, academic, and philosopher. She is a retired professor who taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has an extensive history in revolutionary activism and at one point was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitive List in 1970. Ultimately, she was found not guilty in her trial on suspicion of involvement in the Marin County Civic Center invasion by Jonathan Jackson.

Women, Race & Class examines the history of feminist movements in the United States that focuses on the struggles and contributions of black women. It is a masterpiece in uncovering the complex field of feminist intersectionality. Published in 1981, it has solidified itself as a cornerstone book that is a must-read when it comes to exploring the fields of feminism and black history. 

The book underlines how classism and racism affected feminist movements in the United States, highlighting the complex interplay between various systemic power structures. Davis emphasizes the point of how feminist movements failed black women, lower-class women, lower-class black women, and other women who did not fit in the category of early-wave feminist leaders; upper-class white women. 

I cannot stress how talented Angela Davis is at weaving narratives with complex and thorough research. The book is divided into thirteen chapters, which each act as separate long essays that are interwoven with one another.

Trigger Warnings: Topics such as sexual assault and abuse are covered in this work -- particularly abuses towards women in slavery.

Chapters: 

The Legacy of Slavery: Standards for a New Womanhood. 

The Anti-Slavery Movement and the Birth of Women’s Rights. 

Class and Race in the Early Women’s Rights Campaign. 

Racism in the Woman Suffrage Movement. 

The Meaning of Emancipation According to Black Women. 

Education and Liberation: Black Women’s Perspective. 

Woman Suffrage at the Turn of the Century: The Rising Influence of Racism. 

Black Women and the Club Movement. 

Working Women, Black Women and the History of the Suffrage Movement. 

Communist Women. 

Rape, Racism and the Myth of the Black Rapist. 

Racism, Birth Control and Reproductive Rights. 

The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working-Class Perspective. 

This book is a must-read when it comes to deconstructing history education given in many Western and white-led curriculums. For me, it was a cornerstone in delving into the realm of books centred around Black history, intersectional feminism, and decolonization efforts. 

Other books of note (of which I will eventually write reviews): 

Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine and the Foundations of a Movement, Angela Y. Davis, Cornel West & Frank Barat, 2015. 

Are Prisons Obsolete? Angela Y. Davis, 2003. 

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, Ibram X. Kendi, 2016.

The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation, Daina Ramey Berry, 2017. 

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson, 2020. 

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, Richard Rothstein, 2017. 

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Ann Jacobs, 1861. 

Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890 – 2000, Adam Fairclough, 2001. 

[jalensthotsonbooks]

East of Eden and American Identity.

The T'epot'aha'l tribe are the indigenous tribe of the Salinan valley along the central coast of California. The official website of the tribe claims that they’ve inhabited the area for over 10,000 years. Large piles of their waste have been studied by anthropologists, and the ‘middens’ as the piles are called, not only support the 10,000-year claim, but also give us an insight as to the geographic locations of their settlements, their diets, and their life. From these Middens scientists have been able to theorize that the T'epot'aha'l people likely subsisted on fish, shellfish, and would occasionally venture inland to hunt wild game. We know from their descendants that the only thing that created a barrier for the T'epot'aha'l people from the rest of the world was language. These are a people without belief in borders, property, and other concepts that would later be introduced to them by Spanish colonizers (Salinan Tribe of San Luis Obispo and Monterey Counties).

Those same Spanish colonizers would divide the T'epot'aha'l population into three groups by dialect, force them into slavery to build missions, and forcibly indoctrinate as many of them as possible. Many who weren’t outright murdered would succumb to disease transmitted by the Spaniards. The vast majority of sources on the T'epot'aha'l people refer to them as the Salinan tribe. This was a name given to them by the Spaniards, named in relation to the river the lived next to, also named by the aforementioned colonizers. This is how America culturally chooses to remember these people. By the name by which they were conquered (Herrera) (Salinan Tribe of San Luis Obispo and Monterey Counties).

To me, America is an idea. When I refer to ‘America’ I’m referring to the abstract cultural concept of ‘the American dream’ and all of the colonized territories the governing body of the United States exercises hard power over. American culture is defined by the other. To be an American is to be the conqueror. East of Eden by John Steinbeck is a novel written the seeks to romanticize this ideology of dominance hierarchies.

In East of Eden’s first chapter, on the sixth page, Stenbeck recounts the same history I’ve just given you about the T'epot'aha'l people, only from his perspective. He describes the ‘Salinas’ people as being “an inferior breed” and that they were a people without culture, intelligence, and ridicules them for their lack of conventional western farming practices. Steinbeck swiftly transitions to the Spaniards who he described as “greedy” and “realistic” before explaining his account of how the Salinas valley was named (Steinbeck 6). Finally, Steinbeck ends the first chapter giving his account of the “Americans” describing them as “even more greedy” and how they “remade the laws to make them more good” (Steinbeck 7). For the most part, this is how the average American conceives the history of the United States.

As ahistorical and unscientific as it may be, this narrative is justified in the mind of Steinbeck, and people that share his belief because they’ve bought fully into the narrative that the “American Dream” presents to those who engage with it. That “American Dream” is what this review will be engaging with. At it’s heart this novel is little more than what Atlas Shrugged was for capitalism. Propaganda. While Steinbeck has some genuinely beautiful prose and descriptions, along with objectively well-crafted story structures, East of Eden doesn’t have any substantial narrative to analyze or even really much of a nuanced ideology to deconstruct. What the book is “about” means little in comparison to what it attempts to proselytize to the reader. Steinbeck thought he wrote the American Dream, but East of Eden is about the American Nightmare.

On page 131 of East of Eden, Steinbeck goes on a long diatribe about how he believes that the only worthwhile accomplishments in human history have been from the individual. Steinbeck truly believes in his heart and soul, that regardless of all evidence of the contrary, all positive change in the world has come as a result of a single individual imposing his will. I could share the quote here, but as is all Americana literature, it finds a way to turn a sentence into Jesus fucking Christ why did this book need to be 600 pages about white guys being angry. This is, in its heart, what East of Eden is about. Both angry white guys, and the invincibility of the individual that imposes their will. When we take a historical perspective, this is how the United States continues to justify its empire. We’ve won all of our wars, and when we lost, we just used our immeasurable propaganda powers to ensure that the vast majority of Americans think of Vietnam as a “mistake” instead of a failed military colonial venture. In the United States we have the resources to turn our most embarrassing, crushing defeats, into the plights of a temporarily embarrassed millionaire. East of Eden is a myth that reaffirms this belief in American superiority.

As a brief overview of my grievances with this text:

Adam is a stand in for the biblical character of the same name, and for the vast majority of the book he spends the story moping, brooding, and being emotionally unavailable because the wife he kidnapped and manipulated into moving across the country shot him in the shoulder. Despite this Steinbeck has never taken a community college creative writing class because he’s never heard of the principle of show don’t tell. Every character and even Steinbeck himself remarks how great, kind, caring, and compassionate Adam is. Even though he just spends the vast majority of the book brooding and making tons of money.

Lee is Adam’s Chinese servant. He speaks in broken English, is often referred to by other characters as “Ching Chong” and by the narrator as “The Chinese”. He wax-poetics about the meaning of servitude and how great it is to be a servant. Lee raises Adam’s children, takes care of Adam, and if we’re judging by actions taken, is essentially the protagonist of the book. It’s a shame that the vast majority of word space for the book is spent being as orientalist as possible toward the poor lad.

There is one black character literally called the N-word with an R. She shows up twice, once as an example of how great of a manager she is, a second to die.

Cathy is the female lead of the book and Adams wife. She is evil because Steinback said so. Also mostly cause she’s a woman. I’ve never hated a character more than I have Cathy. Not because of anything she’s done wrong, precisely the opposite. Cathy is born into the world, instantly provided with a role she rejects, is abused for it, and then everybody in the world decides that she is now the worst human to ever exist simply because she doesn’t fill a role, they’ve chosen for her. Cathy does some awful things and says awful things throughout the book, but it feels more like Steinbeck being chronically divorced and maiden-less.

What these grievances cumulate in are the thesis of East of Eden. The book stares the American Dream in the face and embraces the spoils of all those who have been pillaged. It revels in the privilege that is afforded by its author, and folks like him and declares that this is the way things ought to be. Often times, in the United States, we use the ends to justify the means. We like to believe that if somebody punches you hard enough, then you deserve to get hit. We like to believe that if you lie, cheat, steal, assault, and destroy your way into office, well, you deserved it. We like to think that being an “American” is about being able to hurt as many people as possible and face no repercussions for your actions. What does justice look like? Somebody who’s ‘not American’ being punished for trying to play Uncle Sam’s game. In so many words, this is what East of Eden is about. It is an exercise in reaffirming the status quo. I am repulsed by it. East of Eden, and books like it is the reason why I have to research for hours on end just to learn about the people who lived here first. This book is one of the reasons why we can’t agree on “is gender made up?” East of Eden is a nightmare. We need to wake up. Read something better.

Works Cited

Herrera, A. In California, Salinan Indians Are Trying To Reclaim Their Culture And Land. 2 Nov. 2017, https://www.npr.org/2017/12/13/570208941/in-california-salinan-indians-are-trying-to-reclaim-their-culture-and-land.

Salinan Tribe of San Luis Obispo and Monterey Counties. 2 Jan. 2025, https://salinantribe.com.

Steinbeck, J. East of Eden, Penguin, 2003,

[bonni]

Sometimes I'll be sitting around and I'll just randomly remember what a shockingly good movie The Suicide Squad (2021) was. I'll put my discussion under the cut because I truly believe it is best to go into this movie blind. If you haven't seen it, you should go watch it right now.

The entire concept behind the suicide squad (not the movie, just the general franchise) is that a bunch of villains become antiheros because they're working for the government, and this movie completely deconstructs that by making the American government the main villain. The moment in which the suicide squad become the heroes is the moment they decide they'd rather die than be complicit in government atrocities. Considering the boot-licking of the MCU (and previous DC films as well), I never expected a big-budget superhero movie with a theatrical release to go that far. They fully indict US foreign policy and government interference in South America, as well as drawing direct parallels to Operation Paperclip in portraying the American government as complicit in post-WW2 Nazi experimentation. And they drive all of this home with some incredibly stylish cinematography that goes out of its way to draw parallels between the overly-patriotic (and white) Peacemaker and the jaded-by-incarceration (and Black) Bloodsport, ultimately condemning Peacemaker's mindless devotion to the US government and having Bloodsport, a man representative of everything the government hates and tries to repress, step up and become the true hero of the movie. And let's look at our other heroes: an impoverished street urchin, a victim of parental abuse, a psychiatrized victim of ipv, and a hybrid who is forced to live on the fringes of society due to his appearance. This entire movie is about people who have been done wrong by the government in some way turning against it to fight for the lives of innocent people in the "developing world," people who the government has deemed disposable. I really need to rewatch this movie soon, it is eating my brain.