#trump dropped so many bombs during his presidency

[unityrain24]

seeing some people say that trump is worse than biden and that they are going to vote for trump.... DO YOU THINK TRUMP WOULDNT SUPPORT FUCKING GENOCIDE????

[eelhound]

"Being scandalized by Republican hypocrisy sort of feels like getting mad at a dog for peeing on your carpet. If anything, you’re the chump for having any sort of expectations for them.

The far more perverse thing, to me, is the way the idea of 'political violence' has been invoked in the aftermath of [the attempted Trump assassination] as something totally alien and un-American. 'There���s no place in America for this kind of violence,' said President Joe Biden. 'It’s sick,' he continued, saying that this kind of political violence was 'just unheard of.' He later said the violence was 'contrary to everything we stand for as a nation.' Former President Obama shared similar sentiments, saying, 'There is absolutely no place for political violence in our democracy,' urging Americans to 'use this moment to recommit ourselves to civility and respect in our politics.' The headline for the New York Times Editorial Board’s take on events was that 'The Attack on Donald Trump Is Antithetical to America.'

I’m sorry, but what country do these people think they live in? We’ve just spent the last nine months being blasted in the face with images and videos of some of the most unspeakable carnage imaginable coming out of Gaza. Most of it has been carried out using U.S.-made weapons. Political violence is so 'antithetical to America' that on the very same evening that the op-ed was penned, the Israeli military dropped eight massive American-made bombs on the al-Mawasi refugee camp, an area that the Israel Defense Force had previously designated a 'safe zone' for civilians to flee. Israel claimed that two senior members of Hamas may have been hiding among the 80,000 civilians sheltering there. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, 90 people are dead and 300 are wounded. One of the survivors described the scene to Reuters: 'I left the tent and looked around, all the tents were knocked down, body parts, bodies everywhere, elderly women thrown on the floor, young children in pieces.' Not long before reports of this massacre rolled in, Israel Katz, the foreign affairs minister of Israel, issued a condemnation of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, saying 'Violence can never ever be part of politics.' The irony was apparently lost on him.

Many of the people currently condemning political violence don’t actually hate political violence. What they really condemn is violence against politicians. But there is no act of violence more political than dropping bombs on a city of defenseless people because you want their land. Massacres like the one carried out Saturday have been going on for nine months, and, among the political class, they have rarely been condemned with anything nearing the force of the Trump assassination. In fact, the student protesters who spoke out against the war in Gaza — condemning political violence, in other words — were met with state violence themselves, which was cheered on by these same politicians. 

On the contrary, the people right now who are dismayed at political violence are some of its foremost perpetrators. Biden is, of course, selling Israel the weapons they’re using to destroy Gaza and kill scores of its people. Beyond that, President Obama authorized so many drone strikes during his term of office that if he were to apologize to one innocent civilian killed by them each day, it would take him more than three years. Trump, today’s brave victim of political violence, not only expanded those drone assassinations and spoke openly about 'taking out terrorists’ families' but even bragged about ordering the assassination of an American citizen in an act of 'retribution.' 

Even when they’re not directly ordering acts of what we might think of as 'political violence, U.S. leaders oversee a system that inflicts violence on both a national and global scale.

At home, both parties support a for-profit healthcare system that kills tens of thousands of Americans each year who can’t afford medical care. Each week, nearly 150 people (and nearly 1,500 in the wintertime!) still die of COVID-19, in part because treatments for the illness are so unaffordable. The Biden administration has abandoned most efforts to mitigate the virus, including workplace protections, and ended the public health emergency in 2023, which transferred costs of testing, vaccination, and care from government to health insurance companies and individuals. The CDC now tells workers that they no longer need to stay home from work for five days if they catch the illness, and only one state, New York, still requires businesses to pay leave for employees who are sick with COVID. And some state governments have even criminalized wearing masks in public.

The Supreme Court just made it legal for states and cities to jail homeless people sleeping outside. Police, whose departments both parties have showered with increasing amounts of funding, killed more people last year than at any point in the previous decade. The U.S. has so many mass shootings that it averages out to more than one a day, but our leaders have failed to pass even the most basic gun control laws, like an assault weapons ban or universal background checks at the federal level. And after mass shootings, Republican-led state legislators in particular have been more likely to loosen gun restrictions rather than tighten them.

When migrants flee poverty and war to seek relative safety in the United States, they are met with razor wire and buoys with blades affixed in order to maim them. Since the U.S. Border Patrol began its Prevention Through Deterrence program in 1994, the agency reports that 10,000 people have been killed while attempting to cross. Other aid organizations estimate the number to be as high as 80,000. Even those who reach the U.S. safely are often subject to inhumane conditions in immigration detention centers.

The United States provides military support to a majority of the globe’s dictators, which allows them to carry out their own acts of political violence. The U.S. has provided arms to Saudi Arabia as it has carried out a monstrous military campaign in Yemen that has killed more than 150,000 people, including tens of thousands of civilians. U.S. sanctions have inflicted collective punishment on the people living in enemy nations, like Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran, in an effort to foment regime change. One study found that U.S. sanctions on Venezuela, which deprived its people of food and medical supplies, contributed to as many as 40,000 deaths from 2017-2018 within the country. 

Each act of violence described above is a consequence of political actions or political inactions. And I could go on with more examples, going all the way back to the founding of the nation and the genocide of Native Americans. As former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner wrote in Newsweek yesterday, 'America was founded on violence. [...] A nation founded in violence, whose economy is rooted in violence, will have a society that is violent.'  And yet, most of this violence is inflicted on average people, not politicians — which may be one reason our policies are rarely conceived of as 'violent.'

To be clear, I don’t intend to diminish the significance of the attempt on Donald Trump’s life. It was indeed a destructive act of political violence that should be opposed. But the very same people who treat an attack on Trump as some horrifying anomaly — including Trump himself — are perpetrators of vastly greater violence than what occurred on Saturday.

 In response to the assassination attempt against Trump, in an effort to 'lower the temperature,' the Biden campaign pulled its advertisements criticizing Trump from the air. And on condition of anonymity, campaign officials reportedly told Reuters that 'Rather than verbally attacking Trump in the coming days, the White House and the Biden campaign will draw on the president's history of condemning all sorts of political violence including his sharp criticism of the ‘disorder’ created by campus protests over the Israel-Gaza conflict.' (Reuters has since quietly removed this paragraph from the story, though they did not issue a correction or retraction, so the reason is unclear.) Apparently, now that Trump has been shot, he’s no longer a 'threat to democracy,' and they’re instead going to spend precious time bashing voters that Biden already desperately needs to support him. 

This was an election where, in the words of President Biden, 'Personal freedoms are on the ballot.  The right to privacy, liberty, equality, they’re all on the ballot.' But after the assassination attempt, according to Axios, a 'senior House Democrat' says 'We've all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency.' Two days ago, Trump was Hitler Jr. Now, the party that has spent the last nine years claiming to be the only bulwark against fascism is throwing in the towel with fascism on the doorstep. 

It could not be clearer that, to the people in charge, all of this is a game and a joke. But seen from their perspective, the decision of Democratic elites to essentially throw the election in an act of decorum does make a sort of sense. Writer and attorney Dylan Saba put it quite well on X: 'Truly beautiful to see the ruling class come together like this… What’s most important is their personal safety — and the love they have for one another.' 

He’s right! People in Biden’s position will be insulated, more than most, from the consequences of a potential Trump victory. They will not be deported if he wins the election. They’ll be able to pay to get their loved one an abortion if they need one. None of them are transgender and at risk of having their legal personhood revoked. Most of them would probably benefit from Trump’s plan to get rid of the federal income tax in favor of a regressive tariff. 

To the extent that the members of the ruling class care about any of this, it’s only insofar as it affects their personal power and well-being. Just look at how Joe Biden has been acting in the past few weeks as he’s clung to the nomination. When asked how he’d feel if his decision to stay in the race results in Trump returning to power, he said: 'I'll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the good as job as I know I can do, that's what this is about.'

That really is 'what this is about.' This is about them, their comfort, their egos, and their personal glory — all of it completely divorced from the reality of life for the vast majority of people on this planet. And that’s why an assassination attempt disturbs these people so much more than all the death and destruction that is inflicted on the world each day as a result of their actions. We must remember: the fights that matter are not theirs, they’re ours."

- Stephen Prager, from "'Political Violence' is All Around Us." Current Affairs, 16 July 2024.

[bllsbailey]

Did Obama Tell Biden That They Had Kamala's Approval to 25th Amendment Him?

If this story is true, and it’s a big what if, then Joe Biden has been deposed in a coup that’s reminiscent of banana republics. The problem is the sourcing: the story appears to be written by Seymour Hersh. Hersh isn’t a fake news peddler, though his stories often rely on anonymous sources, so much cannot be verified. For those who don’t know, Hersh has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times. He won a Pulitzer for his reporting on the Mai Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War. Hersh may have a liberal bias, but he’s not overall a conspiracy theorist, at least not in the vein of someone like Louise Mensch, a former member of the UK Parliament, who went totally off the deep end during the Russian collusion hoax. 

Hersh’s pervasive use of anonymous sources has given many an editor heartburn. Still, this story also is grounded since Joe Biden was facing pressure from all angles to step aside following his disastrous June 27 debate. His polling began to crater, placing states like Virginia in play. Donors withheld their cash; Hill Democrats poured out, calling the president to step aside. The dam finally broke during the Republican National Convention. Still, Biden remained entrenched even though he was looking at a Jimmy Carter-style loss if he stayed. At this point, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Hakeem Jeffries increased their campaign to nudge the president into quitting. Barack Obama was already working behind the scenes to force Biden to exit the race, which brings us to this piece of palace intrigue: Biden called Joe saying that he got the go-ahead from Kamala to invoke the 25th Amendment. Hersh noted that Obama dropped this bomb at breakfast time on July 21. Hours later, Biden would quit the race:

Take from this story what you will, but we can discern that there was a massive push within the Democratic Party to dump Joe. During his trip to Nevada, which got nuked by his COVID diagnosis, his money man, Jeffrey Katzenberg, warned him that the well was drying up. The campaign spent mountains of cash on efforts to defeat Trump, and the needle wasn’t budging. The other part of this Nevada trip is the reported medical emergency that occurred, leading to roads being closed and a medical team assembled for Biden at University Medical Center in Las Vegas over an apparent stroke. It was later aborted, with the motorcade being diverted to the airport when supposedly the president could be treated for a mini-stroke or transient ischemic attack. He wasn’t seen for days until he called into Kamala Harris’ campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, where he sounded close to death, his speech slurred. 

Biden was muscled out, and that’s not a tin foil hat observation. Scott Jennings made a similar point on CNN, noting how Biden’s exit also marks how easy it is to topple a president if the party’s big wigs band together. Biden might have been able to save his presidency if he had the political acumen and skill required for the job. He never possessed those qualities. No money, no friends on the Hill, and even the base had done a 180-degree turn on wanting Joe to stay. He was frail, had COVID, and now another medical episode of undetermined origin, but wouldn’t be shocked if it was a TIA. Could he handle it? Nope. 

Now, let’s say this story is true, we need hearings. In this universe, Kamala Harris appears to be someone who orchestrated a coup. When did the 25th Amendment chatter start? A woman who no Democrat voted for is about to become the official 2024 Democratic Party nominee for president—it’s astounding-ly bad. No Democrat has ever voted for Kamala, who proved to be so unpopular that she quit her 2020 campaign before the start of the primary season that cycle. 

Even if this breakfast body slam by Obama never happened, the cumulative effect of the anti-Biden forces within the Democratic Party amounted to a coup. The irony is, again, if this story is true, is that many saw Kamala as Biden’s 25th Amendment insurance policy. Let’s also not forget that no so long ago, many were pondering whether Biden should dump Kamala due to her unpopularity and overall awkwardness on the stump.

Trending on Townhall Videos

[shyocean]

If you are against American involvement in genocide, please don't be obviously Brand New about it.

Absolutely wild to me that people think supporting the genocide in Gaza is the first bad thing their government has done during their lives.

Do you have no idea what has been going on for the last 25 years? The last century? It's entire existence?

Usually we aren't supporting the mass murder of civilians, we are doing it ourselves.

"Turns out I'm really good at killing people," Obama told aides in 2011. "Didn't know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine." Former President Donald Trump, naturally, was even worse. At the start of his presidency, he rolled back even the modest protections for civilians Obama had implemented. Both air strikes (from drones and normal planes) and civilian casualties increased dramatically in 2017. To be fair, strikes were scaled back in the following years, but the damage was done. According to Airwars, during Trump's term American air and artillery strikes in Iraq and Syria created more than twice the number of casualties compared to Obama's second term (more than 10,000 vs. about 5,000). In Somalia, casualties increased roughly eight-fold.

And in the process of defeating ISIS, Trump's callous disregard for human life led to a botched 2017 airstrike in Mosul that killed 278 civilians, the worst death toll from a single American attack in the entire Iraq conflict. Immediately after taking office, [Biden] set up a new system requiring White House approval for any strikes outside of active war zones (and later published Trump's loose rules that enabled so many civilian massacres). Now that the occupation of Afghanistan is over, that requirement applies almost everywhere, and it appears Biden is extremely reluctant to grant approval. Where Trump oversaw more than 1,600 air and artillery strikes in Iraq and Syria during his first 11 months in office, Airwars reports just four during Biden's term so far. Strikes in Somalia fell from roughly 75 last year to fewer than 10 this year, with no civilian casualties. And in Yemen, the annual total dropped from about 18 to maybe four, with fewer than 10 casualties of any kind. (Precise figures are unclear because some strikes are classified.)

U.S. military and C.I.A. drone operators generally must obtain advance permission from President Biden to target a suspected militant outside a conventional war zone, and they must have “near certainty” at the moment of any strike that civilians will not be injured, newly declassified rules show. The 15-page rules, signed by Mr. Biden last October, also limit such drone strikes to situations in which the operators deem “infeasible” any option of capturing the targeted person alive in a commando raid. And if national security officials propose targeting any American, it prompts a more extensive review. The rules tightened constraints on drone strikes and commando raids that President Donald J. Trump had loosened in 2017.

In the same way that the Gazan genocide didn't start in October and it's disingenuous to pretend it did. Acting like Biden is uniquely complicit, when he's been our least bloodthirsty president in the last 50 years, is just showing you haven't been paying attention.

If you care about stopping genocide, and you are American, you have to actually look at what has been happening the whole time.

Trump closed borders to Muslim countries and capped refugees at historic lows--an order of magnitude lower. He bombed indiscriminately. The Republicans want to bomb Gaza until the rubble bounces.

Biden is the lest violent, least hawkish president we have had since, I don't know, Carter? He is still Center Right, I know. America is still a death machine, I know.

America has always been a death machine. That's not a reason to take your hand off the wheel.

[thoughtsbeewild]

Shout out to All American Patriots out there who make "Unity" Happen. Senile Biden didn't do it, the STUPID who collided with Obama, took your money for concerts and entertainment

That video that one girl did with Jason Aldean song "go woke go broke" damn i never realized how many Americans patriots felt that way, after seeing so many SHORTS made out of that song, shorts in all kinds of forms which lets you know SILENT MAJORITY OF FOLKS ARE LISTENING, ITS AMAZING! We all don't want to see America fall. Biden, the demoncrats, MAINSTREAM MEDIA , CELEBRITIES LIKE TAY TAY SWIFT(PEOPLE DONT REMEMBER HER HOSTILE TWITTER QUOTE ABOUT ORANGE MAN HOW HE SHOULD GO TO HELL ROTT, NOBODY VOTE FOR HIM) DO YOU GUYS REMEMBER TWITTER HATRED QUOTE TAYLOR SWIFT DID DURING CAMPAIGN ELECTION IN 2020?

Revisit Recap : 2020 campaign election

NO BECAUSE ALL THAT HAS BEEN WIPED OUT, YET HERE WE ARE IN 2023 SHE BECAME MOST POPULAR BITCH ON SOCIAL MEDIA GAINING SO MANY FOLLOWERS AND PEOPLE ATTENDING HER CONCERTS. Some people I work with are HARD CORE TAYLOR SWIFT FANS. Its like Mainstream Media which is controlled by the GOVT will focus on shit that you shouldnt know. Same with all the Fucking Homicide, the killings in each state..But yet here we are, thier HATRED FOR TRUMP STILL RISES BECAUSE NOW THAT BIDEN IN POWER PRESIDENT HE CAN GET ALL CONTROL AND USE EVERYTHING AGAINST ORANGE MAN TO GET HIM LOCKED UP. BIDEN CAN TWIST EVERY WORD , ALLEGATIONS AND MAINSTREAM MEDIA CNN, YAHOO, TMZ, NBC, FOX NEWS, ALL THOSE FUCKERS STIR UP THE PUBLIC.

LIKE THAT STUPID PUBLICITY FOR CALIFORNIA SO CALLED HURRICAN HILLARY, FROM THE RESIDENTS OF CALIFORNIA IN THAT STATE I SPOKEN TO , ALL IS FINE NOTHING HAPPEN. LIKE ANY OTHER RAIN OR WHATEVER. THE MEDIA THE DEMONCRAT GOVERNOR NEWSOM WENT ABOVE AND BEYOND TO MAKE IT SOUND LIKE CALIFORNIA WAS OVER. NO I THINK TEXAS, FLORIDA, NEW YORK, ATLANTA, INDIANAPOLIS, MINNESOTA AND OTHER STATES HAVE IT MORE BAD.

So whats my point, my point is that communites are helping eachother from destroying eachother. Yet people bow down to the government and taylor swift and the fucking celebrities as if they were responsible for helping US PUNY AMERICAN PATRIOTS out. The little people.. The fact that that video i shared, man alot people are making that viral in thier own silent way. I think thats awesome, im silent here because ya'll know whats up and how shit works and how many corrputed people will try to use DIRT to destroy your life, the life you build..

I did not watch the 2023 presidential debate. WHY? BECAUSE I LOST HOPE IN OUR PRESIDENTAL ELECTION AFTER SENILE BIDEN GOT ELECTED BY THE DOMINION MACHINE, HELP OF BAD APPLES IN ALL STATES TO DROP MORE MAIL IN VOTES, A PRESIDENT SAT IN HIS BASEMENT ENTIRE CAMPAIN IN 2020 ELECTION DID NOT DESERVE TO BE THIS PRESIDENT. THE ONE who is creating war, death amongst the United states. The fact that thier alot of people killing eachother all over the united states in small poor communities are at the highest risk, murders

Nobody REMEMBERS VALDERADE SHOOTINGS WHAT WAS IT 19 KIDS, 2 ADULTS, ASIAN HATE CRIME AND NAIL SALOON 4 SHOOTERS, MORE KILLINGS EVERYWHERE, THIS IS UNDER UNITED STATES PRESIDENT BIDEN THAT PEOPLE ARE SO HAPPY ABOUT. YET PEOPLE ARE PRAISING TAYLOR SWIFT? LIKE WHY? DID SHE HELP WITH ANYTHING BUT MORE MONEY INCOME FOR HERSELF?

Whats worst an unsolictied virus known as covid 19? that originated from a bat cave. Then people and media pointed to orange man. Member CNN making every show a ticking time bomb of deaths every day.

The media never points anything bad about Senile Biden , it puppets and its FAMOUS CELEBRITIES THAT.

CNN , the CELEBRITIES, TMZ. YAHOO, MSBC, THE HILL they dont do the TICKING TIME BOMB HOW MANY MURDERS, DEATH HAPPEN UNDER HIS PRESIDENCY. WHY THEY DONT DO THAT, THATS NOT FAIR. LIKE THE UNFAIR ELECTION.

That's how new LEADERSHIP is at my old COMPANY. YOU DARE QUESTION, CHALLENGE THIS EVIL DIRECTOR, SUPERVISOR, YOU ARE DONE, WHICH MEANS WHAT THEY DO THE ORANGE MAN, WHAT I HAD EXPERIENCED. IT HAS BEEN CRAZY WAY TO HEAL and not go to the liberal/demoncratic behavior.

[a-skirmish-of-wit-and-lit]

Book Review: Rage by Bob Woodward

I half hate myself for reading the bulk of this book during election week's Nine Circles of Impatient and Bated-Breath Hell of 2020 because it only capped my anxieties about the future, about America and where we could be headed, making the wait for a projected winner all the more excruciating. Honestly, I have no idea what I was thinking. I could have lit my own eyeballs on fire and it would've been less disturbing than subjecting myself to an investigative recap of this president's many and repeated failings. On the other hand, I'm also grateful to have read it when I did. I say that because it placed Woodward's journalistic work ethic, professionalism, and integrity into sharp focus while also re-clarifying how unprecedented and chaotic the entire Trump era has been. There has been no peace, no unity. Little to no sense of direction. Messages to and from dictators read like love letters while our Allies are pushed to the distant periphery. Experts are ignored, disregarded, or replaced. Lies have been shuffled, spoonfed to the public like truth; and rage over differences has been lit with gasoline instead of whittled away through conscious attempts at empathy and compassion. It's astonishing, frankly. To say I've suffered mental fatigue these past four yes is a colossal understatement. I have neither been more exhausted nor more disillusioned. Every day it's like I'm watching democracy dangle from the edge of a fraying string. As Americans, we have all been privy to the president's whims, tantrums, and flights of Twitter fancy for four years now - sometimes to the detriment of our own health or national security - and what Woodward does here is put it all into clearer perspective by asking real questions. Hard questions. Troubling questions. He exposes the kinds of things about Trump, about the inner workings of his mind and political strategy the last couple years, that many of us either already know or wish we didn't comprehend so acutely seeing as how humongous danger! danger! bombs have been dropping in his wake since he first took up the mantle of political office in 2016. If anything, this book was reaffirming for me. It reanimated the pandemonium I already knew was there, bringing it, and him, more to the surface. There are certain people who should never be handed the key of power because they'll abuse it, corrupt it, weaponize it for their own use--and Trump is one of these people. If that's how you feel, too, then there's not much inside that will surprise you. All the Trump danger trademarks are there. Narcissism, complicity, evasion, recklessness, lack of humility, a stubborn disregard for science or fact--you name it. Woodward lets you read it all, more or less unfiltered, in the president's own words, from his own lips. So, even though there's not much here that's all too surprising, you will come across Trumpian attitudes or tactics toward democracy that should trouble you, and if they don't, well...I guess I'll have to trouble over them for you.

4/5 stars

*You can also follow me on Goodreads

[quatorz]

Here’s something I wrote just prior to the election...

I’m sharing it here in case anyone thinks its useful.  I think-especially with the events of today-its going to become so apparent that we need to ‘demystify’ the Trumpster fire and expose him for the lying sack of shit that he was.

I said to a friend of mine MANY years ago that the most dangerous thing that was happening was that the truth was becoming partisan.  Man is that true now. 

But I wrote this, sent it to a few relatives (including my own Dad who is a supporter of the Orange One), and posted it to Facebook. 

The goal of the piece was always: ‘hey, you don’t have to listen to me.  Here are other sources (most of them Republican) who point out this mans complete inability to fill the Oval Office.  (And I live in Pennsylvania, and I wrote this just before our former Governor-former Republican Governor-Tom Ridge endorsed Biden.  Else I definitely would have included this). 

And some of it may seem slightly personal or familiar?  I was writing this primarily to speak to members of my family and friends. 

If any of this is useful, feel free to use it. 

Why I’m Not Voting for Trump

A few weeks ago a bomb dropped.  Not a literal bomb-as in ordinance, but a news bomb.  Although in our endlessly insane (or maybe insanely endless?) news cycle that’s been the last four years, it was easy to get overshadowed because another bomb probably dropped the next day or ever a few hours after that one.

But this one was different.  This was the revelation that Trump had 400 million dollars in outstanding loans.  On one of those loans-for 100 million dollars-they’d paid only the interest-none of the principal-and the loan is due in 2022.  The obvious question was asked: who does he owe that money too?

It’s a good question.  There was a great quote making the rounds from Eric Trump in 2014: ‘Who needs American banks?  Russia has plenty of money!’  During his town hall Savannah Guthrie asked Trump directly if that 400 million dollars was owed to foreign banks.  “Probably,” he said.

So: what makes that revelation a ‘bomb’? 

When I heard this, I immediately thought back to an instance that’s always stuck with me: last October when we inexplicably pulled our troops out of Syria.  Do you remember that?  Trump got off the phone with President Erdogan and announced that we were pulling out of Syria.  The backlash was immediate and bi-partisan.  Resident sycophant Lindsay Graham was especially critical, tweeting out:

“The most probable outcome of this impulsive decision is to ensure Iran’s domination of Syria...The U.S. now has no leverage and Syria will eventually become a nightmare for Israel.

“I feel very bad for the Americans and allies who have sacrificed to destroy the ISIS Caliphate because this decision virtually reassures the reemergence of ISIS.  So sad.  So dangerous.  President Trump may be tired of fighting radical Islam.  They are NOT tired of fighting us.”

This incident always stuck with me.  Especially the timing: getting off the phone with Erdogan and then hours later pulling out of Syria.  Astute researchers quickly found an audio clip of Trump on Steve Bannon’s radio show from back in 2011 saying ‘well, I have a conflict of interest when it comes to Turkey.  I have two buildings in Istanbul’...

So at first I thought this was simply another example of something I’d long thought Trump guilty of: being the president of Trump Enterprises first, and America second.  We’d seen that before with one of the first acts of his administration: the Travel Ban*, and then with his handling of the FBI building**. 

But when news of the outstanding loans came to light, I thought again about Syria, and the odd, out-of-the-blue nature of the President’s decision. 

The day the news of the loans broke, they had a former security official on MSNBC, and he brought up an interesting point: if you had large outstanding financial obligations like that to a foreign bank, you might be denied a security clearance based on that fact because you could be threatened or cajoled into acting against our country’s interests. 

Is that what happened here?  Did Erdogan ask Trump to pull his forces out of Syria (or did he demand it)?  Or was it Putin, indirectly through Erdogan who maybe told Trump “a mutual friend would be very appreciative if you would do this for him”. 

Who gave the order to pull out of Syria…?  An order that-according to Lindsey Graham-went against America’s interest and all but assured the resurrection of ISIS?

You’re probably thinking: whoa, Dave!   Easy there!  I mean, that sounds pretty crazy, right?  The idea that the President could be financially compromised to the extent that he does the bidding of our adversaries? 

Actually, I’m not the first to submit this crazy theory.  After the 2018 meeting in Helsinki with Vladimir Putin, a Republican state Congressman from Texas (yes, you read that right: a Republican from Texas) posted an op-ed with the title: Trump Is Being Manipulated by Putin. What Should We Do?

This Texas Republican’s background?  He’s former CIA.  In the op-ed he writes: “over the course of my career as an undercover officer in the C.I.A., I saw Russian intelligence manipulate many people. I never thought I would see the day when an American president would be one of them.”

He goes on to say: “The president’s failure to defend the United States intelligence community’s unanimous conclusions of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and condemn Russian covert counterinfluence campaigns and his standing idle on the world stage while a Russian dictator spouted lies confused many but should concern all Americans. 

“By playing into Vladimir Putin’s hands, the leader of the free world actively participated in a Russian disinformation campaign that legitimized Russian denial and weakened the credibility of the United States to both our friends and foes abroad.”

Wow.

I strongly believe that this President is dangerous.  He’s dangerous in the way he coddles up to autocrats.  He’s dangerous because he has financial entanglements that make him put his own interests before the nation’s.  And he’s dangerous because he politicized a virus that killed 200,000+ people when we now know he’s on record in February telling Bob Woodward (on tape no less) that this was WAY worse the flu, and was deadly. 

But you don’t take my word for it.  Listen to some fellow Republicans.  Here’s a statement by 70 Republicans who served as national security officials and say that this President is dangerously unfit to serve another term.  https://www.defendingdemocracytogether.org/national-security/

There’s more.  In an open letter to America, 780 retired Generals, Admirals, Senior Noncommissioned Officers, Ambassadors and Senior Civilian National Security Officials announced their support of Joe Biden for President for similar reasons: https://www.nationalsecurityleaders4biden.com/

Let me say, also, that I don’t think there’s anything ideologically wrong with being a Republican.  But I would submit to you that this current Republican administration and Republican Congress does not serve you, or anyone you know.

Basically, if you’re not going to watch Penn State play Ohio State tonight from Mar-A-Lago, their interests are not your interests. 

Trump isn’t for the ‘little guy’.  He’s accomplished one thing legislatively in his four years in office, and that was a tax cut for millionaires and billionaires.  Now, those billionaires are using their considerable resources (like Rupert Murdoch and Fox News) to try and get you to vote for him again so that they can keep the gravy train rolling.  It’s as simple as that.  It’s all about money.

Oh, and I forgot one other thing this President has done for the wealthy and corporations: he’s been hell bent on deregulating industry.  Which is great for big business, but not so great for us-the consumers.  In 2019 regulations on the pork industry were rolled back (read more about that here: https://qz.com/1716113/trump-gives-pork-industry-a-path-to-regulate-itself/).

What could go wrong there?  There were two health inspectors who came forward (if I remember right, they may have been the ones to bring the issue to light) and they basically said that they wouldn’t be eating the food from the companies where they had worked. 

Right now there are massive efforts to have legitimate votes cast be discounted.  In Minnesota, Republicans there are fighting a ruling that ballots can be received up to seven days after the election-as long as they are postmarked by election day.

This deadline was put into place months ago because of the pandemic, and was accepted on a bi-partisan basis.  Now Republicans are challenging that.  So you could have voters that put their vote in the mail last Tuesday-while the deadline was valid-only to have their vote challenged if the post office delivers it on Wednesday. 

Surely it can’t be partisan to feel that everyone’s vote should count?  But this is the new extreme right Republican party that will do anything to win-even disenfranchise legal votes.  Discounting valid votes is how we go from being America to being a Banana Republic.  At some point these Republicans need to understand that they are Americans first and Republicans second, or we are screwed as a nation. 

Trump is a man who shows no respect for the office of the President, caters to autocrats while his lawyers argue in court that he shouldn’t be able to be investigated while he’s in office.  If you’re an American, that should ALARM THE CRAP out of you.  Democracies can fall.  It’s happening everywhere around the globe.  If you think it ‘couldn’t happen here’ simply because it never has, that’s some dangerous thinking.  Remember, technically Putin is ‘elected’ into office.  And this Congress has failed epically in its duty to be a check on the executive branch.  That’s their job, by the way-regardless of who is in office.  

Don’t get me started on Attorney General William Barr.  I wonder if-during his confirmation hearings-when he listed ‘Banana Republics’ on his resume they thought he’d worked for the now defunct clothing chain, not that he was adept at creating them. 

You may be asking yourself: why is he putting all this out there now?  Because I love all of you-and certainly respect all of you.  And I see you blindly following a leader who doesn’t represent you or your values.  And I see you acting in a way and saying things and posting things that are inconsistent with the people I know you to be.

I’m working on the assumption that you are being fed false information.  That deep down you are indeed the people that I think you are, but you are being misled.

And remember: there are two ways to lie.  You can outright tell someone something that is false.  But you can also lie by omission.  Fox News is certainly guilty of the former, but maybe even more so of the latter.  (Fox News probably won’t tell you that 780 former Generals and National Security officials say that the President shouldn’t serve another term.   They didn’t lie…they just didn’t mention it.  And I think that’s something worth mentioning.)

Think of the dynamic at work here: Trump does or says something.  The dozens of news organizations that you’ve followed and respected your entire lives tells you it’s false.  One-ONE-news organization backs up his claim (the organization that is owned by a man who has benefited financially from President’s policies).  Meanwhile Trump calls the others ‘fake news’.  Do you see anything wrong there?

There is a great quote from Orwell’s 1984 that has become hauntingly prescient over the last four years: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” 

This Tuesday will be a deciding moment in this nation.  If you want a vote that actually means something in 2024, don’t vote for Trump on Tuesday.

 ****************

*What about the Travel Ban?  Glad you asked.  If you remember, the travel ban was assigned to keep us safe by preventing people from certain countries from coming to America (it is worth noting that the travel ban was first struck down by a federal judge appointed by George Bush).  One of the oddities about the travel ban was that there were three countries that were exempt.  These three countries were the only countries that had produced terrorists that had killed Americans.  None of the countries actually on the travel ban had.   Weird, huh?  Do you know what else these countries had in common?  They all had Trump branded properties. 

 **  The F.B.I. building.  So the F.B.I. building is in not great shape.  It’s old and falling apart.  In fact they had sections of the outside cordoned off so that a piece of the outer façade doesn’t fall off and kill someone.  The U.S. government had worked out a deal with a contractor that the contractor would build the F.B.I. a brand new facility-for free-and then in exchange the contractor would be given the old F.B.I. location to do whatever they want with it.  Presumably, knock down and make it into a new building/hotel/shops (whatever).  Pretty good deal, right?

Except…a year or so ago a lady had a meeting at the White House and then went before Congress and said that the F.B.I. did not, in fact, want a free brand new facility anymore, but instead wanted the renovate and repair the old one instead.  Huh…

Do you know what building is just a couple blocks down from the F.B.I. building’s location?  Trump’s D.C. hotel. 

Now I know what you’re thinking.  You’re saying: ‘but Dave, look at all the NFL owners: they didn’t want new stadiums.  They decided to pour money into their old dilapidated stadiums that were steeped in tradition and history!’  Except you’re not saying that because that never happened.  Everyone wants a new facility over a crumbling money pit, and I’m sure the F.B.I was no exception.

(It’s also interesting to note that-for some reason-there was two billion dollars in one of the recent versions of a Coronavirus relief bill-that wasn’t passed-allocated for the repair of the F.B.I. building.  Why?  Who put that in there? It wasn’t Senate Republicans.  It was funny watching Mitch McConnell answering questions about that and having to admit that he had no idea that it was even in there).

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

13 Keys to the White House: UPDATE

The original post can be read here, I wrote it a day before George Floyd was murdered, and the political landscape has shifted SO MUCH since then.

There are 13 questions that define which party will win the presidential election based on how well the incumbent and challenging parties have fared over the last four years.  The incumbent party needs 8 out of 13 to be true to win, while the challengers need 6 or more to be false.  As of May 25, it stood, in order of severity

FALSE

FALSE

FALSE

Almost certainly false

Probably false

Maybe false

Unclear

Maybe

Maybe true

True as of right now

TRUE

TRUE

TRUE

Biden and Trump both has 3 solid keys in their field, with three more teetering on either side, and one tossup in the middle.  It was anybody’s game, though Biden had a slight edge because he only needs 6 to Trump’s 8.

Not everything has changed in the last week, but just enough to solidify some of the less certain keys

Party Mandate:  After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.  FALSE (Democrats won more in 2018 than Republicans won in 2014)

Contest:  There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination. TRUE (Donald Trump faces no real challengers)

Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.  TRUE (barring the coronavirus, or a heart attack brought on by all the fast food he eats, Donald Trump will be the nominee this November)

Third party:  There is no significant third party or independent campaign. TRUE (Amash has dropped out, and the Libertarians have nominated a nobody who chose an even smaller nobody as her running mate.  But then again, the election is 5 months away, which in 2020-months is approximately 9000 years away; a lot can change between now and then.  I mean, just 5 months ago the coronavirus hadn’t spread outside of China yet.  Maybe a conservative spoiler will gain traction.  Maybe some disillusioned republicans will rally behind a write-in candidate.  Maybe an asteroid hits and we all have to move underground and evolve into C.H.U.D.s to survive.  Anything goes in 2020.  Blow on them dice, LUCK BE A LADY)

Short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.  FALSE (The Great Shutdown, the second once-in-a-lifetime economic collapse in less than 15 years. We’re only four months into it right now; things are going to get so much worse before they get better.)

Long-term economy:  Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.  Almost Certainly False (Unemployment continues to rise at record breaking levels. Civil unrest is widespread in all 50 states, several territories, and even international cities in solidarity with the cause.  The pandemic is far from over, and we are on the verge of a second wave..  There’s no chance in hell the economy will grow this year.  2020 is the Spiders Georg of years; it is a statistical outlier, it’s so low it’ll bring down the rest of the whole term, wiping out all growth since 2017.  I mean, Republicans wanted trump to run the country like one of his businesses, and he’s giving them exactly what they wanted.  This is his MO; run it into the ground, declare bankruptcy, don’t pay anyone, move onto your next failed project.  Same shit as always)

Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.Unclear  (He hasn’t kept many of his campaign promies, but he has enriched himself and his colleagues, abusing the power of the executive for personal gain, which is a pretty major change.  This key will come down to the Supreme Court decisions on his tax returns; if they decide in favor of the president, they are saying that he doesn’t have to obey subpoenas anymore, expanding the powers of the president and getting rid of legislative oversight, checks and balances; this would be a HUGE policy change akin to declaring him a king, as it would mean he is no long capable of being held accountable for anything.  If they decide against him though, a lot of skeletons will come bursting out of his closet, which may or may not damage him politically.  Let’s be honest, they won’t.   Nothing ever does.  The tax returns could reveal that he has been paying a Russian company called “WE MEDDLE, YOU WIN, GUARANTEE” for thirty years, and he and his cronies will still spin it as a positive thing.  Nothing ever hurts this guy, so I wonder why he even gives a shit about hiding his taxes anymore.  All we know is that he has to be hiding something BIG if he’s going this far to try and cover it up,  Could this take him down?  Probably not, but fingers crossed.)

Social unrest:  There is no sustained social unrest during the term.  FALSE  (I made this post before the George Floyd protests began, but there’s no ambiguity about it now.   The cracks in the system have been expanding for years, and now the dam has finally burst.  And rightfully so; riots are the language of the unheard.  My only concerns are that if the protests continue into November, a bunch of republican lawmakers are gonna use it as an excuse to stop people from voting. ”Curfew begins at 8PM, anyone still in line at their polling places will be arrested and/or shot”)

Scandal:  The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.  FALSE (there’s only so much you an handle before you drop all pretenses and say “this is no longer subjective, this is objectively scandalous.”  Everything they do is designed to get as big a reaction as possible, they pick the objectively worst people and take the objectively worst positions on everything because they’re trying to stoke controversy.  Russia, Ukraine, carrots and potatoes.  The real meat are all the domestic scandal.  Turning off the White House lights and hunkering in a safe space underneath it like  PUNK ASS BITCH?  Mobilizing the National Guard around the country?  Teargassing protestors so he can pose with a Bible he’s never read in front of a church he’s never attended, holding it up like it’s some annoying obligation of his, “see? See, I like the Bible. Look, I’m holding it up.  Why would I be holding it up if I didn’t just LOOOOOVE it?  Can everybody see?  I’m holding it out at arms length and waving it back and forth just to make sure all the cameras know, I want then to get a good shot of it. I will shortly give it to an aide and be taken home in my limo, at which point I will forget the Bible exists because my brain is turning to jelly and I’ve lost the concept of object permanence.”)

Foreign/military failure:  The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs. Maybe (on the one hand, Iran didn’t retaliate when we killed their general, but on the other hand we retreated out of Syria, let thousands of ISIS fighters go, and aided the Turks in a Kurdish genocide.  The tit-for-tat sanctions against China threatened to crash the global economy, but then the coronavirus came in and did that all by itself, so it’s unclear whether we’ve “failed” or simply “not succeeded.”)

Foreign/military success:  The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs. Maybe false? (for the same reason as above, it is hard to judge what is or isn’t a success.  USMCA is unpopular and small potatoes.  The North Korean talks are all show with no substance; Kim will never get rid of his nukes.   We’re still caught up in W’s endless wars, and I don’t see an end in sight, so I’d say this is definitely not a success. I have no doubt in my mind the October Surprise is gonna be another bombing in Iran to kill the ayatollah. The Iran War will start on November 3, same day as the election, there will be the first draft since Vietnam, a bunch of POCs will be forced into the military as cannon fodder; it’ll be a bloodbath for both sides)

Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.  FALSE (Trump is revered as the Second Coming of Christ by his base, but they make up less than 40% of the total country; other Republicans tolerate him at best, and all Democrats hate him. He has never had majority approval, he will never go down with the likes of the universally beloved Washington, Lincoln, and the Roosevelts.  The most surprising thing of the last six months has got to be the emergence of the Lincoln Project, a coalition of Republicans who have finally grown spines, guts, and balls to stand up against trump and actively campaign against him.  He doesn’t have total party control anymore, the Republicans are eroding, though to be fair the Democrats eroded a long time ago; the Republicans are a crumbling cairn, longstanding but now weakened and in danger of falling over, while the Democrats are a nice gravel walkway that everyone steps on and complains about even though the walkway is a nice addition to the park; it really ties the negative space together, linking the tennis courts with the pull-up bars.  I’ve lost the thread of this analogy)

Challenger charisma:  The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.  TRUE (Joe Biden is the Walter Mondale of Al Gores.  Republicans hate him,  even though he’s a moderate an would almost certainly try to reach across the aisle to compromise with them.  Which is exactly why about half of Democrats don’t really like him; he’s too moderate and would work with Republicans.  He’s old and senile, he keeps making gaffe after gaffe after gaffe, and doesn’t seem to know how the game is played anymore.  Someone needs to find Grampa a nice home so he can retire and talk to his nurse about how he used to get into fist fights with ne’er-do-wells, “buncha malarkey, I tell ya”)

This gives us, from best to worst:

FALSE

FALSE

FALSE

FALSE

FALSE

Almost Certainly False

Maybe false

unclear

Maybe

TRUE

TRUE

TRUE

TRUE

Incumbent Trumps needs 8 true to win.  Challenger Biden needs 6 false to win.

Biden definitely has 5, he only needs 1 more to claim it, and there are two good keys that are leaning heavily in his favor; trump’s long-term economy is in the tank, and he hasn’t had any victories overseas.  Biden has this one in the bag [don’t grow complacent, there’s still plenty of fuckery to be had from here to November]

Trumps would need to flip four keys to win, only one of which leans in his favor, one is unclear, and two are in Biden’s court.  The economy is in ruins, he hasn’t set up any real domestic Trump Doctrine, and the military has neither succeeded nor failed in any meaningful way these last four years.  He’s going into November with a major disadvantage, perhaps the only time in his life he has ever not had an advantage.

But then again, there’s always the possibility that it could be a 2000/2016 repeat, where Biden wins the popular vote but Trump ekes by with the electoral college victory yet again.  This model doesn’t take that into account because the popular vote winner almost always wins the EC too.

Trump is not more popular today than he was 4 years ago.  He’s never had majority approval.  While his base loves him more now than ever, they represent a minority of voters, and pretty much everyone else hates him.  Anyone who was on the fence in 2016 is definitively over the fence in 2020.  If he “wins,” it’s not going to be a 1972/1984 blowout, that’s just not gonna happen, too many states hate him too much.  It will be very close; I will not rule out the possibility of a 269-269 tie in the electoral college, triggering a contingent election where the House of Representatives has to pick the president.  Democrats have a majority in the House right now, but in contingent elections they don’t vote as 435 individuals, they vote as 50 state blocs; even though there are more Democrats than Republicans, they’re packed together into as few states as possible, giving Republicans over 26 stateside majorities, enough to ensure they would pick Trump in a contingent election.

It’s a bullshit system, and I pray it doesn’t come to that.

[sataniccapitalist]

“Our survival depends on seeing this violent, barbarian behemoth for what it is.”

Chaos, violence, legal challenges, voter suppression and party suppression all culminated in the pathetic display of democratic degeneration on Election Day. After two decades of losing wars, plus the economic collapse of 2008, the response to COVID-19, and now the election debacle, if there were any doubts the U.S. is a morally exhausted empire in irreversible decline, they would have been erased with yesterday’s anti-democratic spectacle.

Democratic Party propagandists and “frightened” leftists are desperate. They tell their supporters and the public that the republic will not survive another term of Donald Trump. They point to his despicable, racist descriptions of undocumented migrant workers from Mexico; his characterization of some global South nations; his misogyny; his crude and obvious white supremacy; his authoritarian proclivities; and his pathological dishonesty—among his many character flaws—as reasons why he must be stopped.

However, for those of us who have been historically subjected to the colonial fascism that is the U.S. settler project, the liberal-left argument that the Trump regime represents some fundamental departure from previous administrations that were equally committed to white power and that he is an existential threat (to whom, we are not clear) remains unpersuasive.

As the Biden and Trump drama plays out, we ask from our experiences some simple questions on what might happen when a victor emerges:

Will either candidate really have the ability to restore the millions of jobs lost during the current economic crisis?

Will the illegal subversion of Venezuela and Nicaragua stop, and the blockade of Cuba end?

Will the prison-industrial complex that is housing ten of thousands of the Black and Brown economically redundant be closed?

Will the charges be dropped against Edward Snowden and the extradition demand for Julian Assange end?

Will Gaza continue to be the largest open-air prison on the planet?

Will the U.S. reverse its decision to deploy new intermediate-range missiles that will be equipped with nuclear warheads targeting Russia in Europe and China in the Asia-Pacific?

Will the Saudi and Obama-originated war on Yemen end?

Will the U.S. settler-colonial state really defund the police and the military?

“The liberal-left argument that the Trump regime represents some fundamental departure from previous administrations remains unpersuasive.”

What is this “new fascism” the latte-left talks about? What is this “existential threat”? For most of us, the threat has always been existential. When colonial Nazism that was inspired by the U.S. Jim Crow South was applied in Europe—with its violence and racism—it was only then that it took on a different moral and political characterization.

The racist French government launches a domestic terror campaign against Muslims in the country, while bombing Africans in Africa and overthrowing their governments. The European Union gives a human rights award to a political opposition in Venezuela that burns Black people alive because those Black people are seen as Maduro supporters. Meanwhile, NATO, the military wing of U.S. and European white supremacy, expands into South America to support the Monroe Doctrine that morally justifies U.S. regional domination. But fascism is coming to the U.S., they cry!

For those of us who reside in the colonized spaces of empire, leading with uncritical emotionalism as we confront and attempt to deal with the Trump phenomenon, is a self-indulgent diversion we cannot afford. That is because, for us, the consequences truly are life threatening.

In occupied Palestine, Venezuela, Yemen, the South-side of Chicago, Haiti, the concentration camps for Indigenous peoples called “reservations,” as well as “Cancer Alley” in Louisiana, our survival depends on seeing this violent, barbarian behemoth for what it is. We must have no sentimental delusions about the difference between the governance of either of the two ruling class-dominated parties.

For us, both parties are ongoing criminal enterprises that are committed to one thing and one thing only: Ultimately serving the interests of the capitalist ruling class—by any means necessary!

It is in that commitment that we, the colonized, the excluded, the killable, who experience the murderous sanctions that deny us food and life preserving medicines, the killer cops who slowly snuff out our lives with their knee on our necks, the deadly military attacks that destroy our ancient nations and turn us into refugees, the subversion of our political systems, the theft of our precious resources, and the literal draining of the value of our lives through the super-exploitation of our labor.

“Both parties are ongoing criminal enterprises.”

For us, we ask, what will be the difference if Biden wins? Wasn’t Biden part of the administration that conspired with the Department of Homeland Security and Democratic mayors to repress the Occupy movement once it became clear the movement could not be co-opted?

Didn’t Obama place Assata Shakur as the first woman on the FBI’s “Most Wanted Terrorists” list and increase the bounty on her head? A recent release of FBI documents revealed it was during the Obama-Biden years that the “Black Identity Extremist ” label was created.

The illegal subversion of Venezuela began with Bush, but intensified under Obama. The sanctions slapped on that country—that were expanded under Trump—have resulted in tens of thousands of innocent people dying from lack of medicines. It was the Obama-Biden administration that decided to devote over $1 trillion to upgrade the U.S. nuclear arsenal over the next decade.

Democratic and Republican strategists support the white supremacist NATO structure, the “Pivot to Asia,” and the insane theory being advanced by military strategists, who are wargaming a nuclear “first-strike” strategy against Russia and China that they believe can be successful in destroying those countries’ intercontinental ballistic missiles while the missiles are still in their launchers. That is why the Trump administration pulled out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and has so far failed to renew the START nuclear treaty with Russia, scheduled to end in February 2021.

“It was during the Obama-Biden years that the ‘Black Identity Extremist’ label was created.”

Not being confused by the liberal framework that advances a cartoonish understanding of fascism that Trump’s bombastic theatrics evokes in the public imagination, it is clear the threat of increased authoritarianism, the use of military force, repression, subversion, illegal sanctions, theft, and rogue state gangsterism is on the agenda of both capitalist parties in the U.S. and the Western European colonizer states.

No matter who sits in the white peoples’ house after the election, we will have to continue to fight for social justice, democracy, and People(s)-Centered Human Rights.

It is important to re-state that last sentence because the left in the U.S. is experiencing extreme anxiety with the events around the election. They want and need to have order, stability and good feelings about their nation again. But for those of us from the colonized zones of non-being, anything that creates psychological chaos, disorder, delegitimization, disruption of the settler-colonial state and demoralization of its supporters is of no concern for us.

Unlike the house slave who will fight harder than the Massa to put out the flames in the plantation house, we call to the ancestors to send a strong breeze.

Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. Baraka serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC). He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and contributing columnist for Counterpunch. He was recently awarded the US Peace Memorial 2019 Peace Prize and the Serena Shim award for uncompromised integrity in journalism

[tessatechaitea]

Justice League International #7 (1987)

Kevin Maguire not really trying looks an awful lot like John Romita Jr at his best.

Ah! It feels good to be back! Taking a crack at John Romita Jr while he's just sitting there not doing anything particularly wrong. Just going about his business pretending to be a comic book artist! I don't know what John Romita's politics are but I bet he now agrees with Donald Trump on one thing: naming your kid after you is a huge fucking mistake. Was all that previous nonsense poisonous, vile, and toxic? I suppose one could argue the point. But I'd also guess that somebody arguing that point has never seen John Romita Jr's art. Or perhaps they have seen it and like it because they have a terribly underdeveloped sense of aesthetics. Otherwise nobody would argue with me at all! They'd just read the previous poisonous, vile, toxic nonsense and nod their heads in agreement while pausing for a second to snort a line of Adderall. Fine, I'm sorry, JRJR! Obviously you're an artist! Drawing squinty people with block heads and weird noses holding geometric guns without a single curve on them absolutely falls under the definition of art! Although I draw the line at accepting that Rob Liefeld is an artist. That's a bridge too far! What the fuck does that even mean, "a bridge too far"? It must be a term bombers in WWII used, right? "What the fuck do you mean, carpet bomb Dresden?! If we fly past the Geralthauskopfplatz Bridge, we're definitely getting scrawked by anti-aircraft flak, you bingehart!" Did that sound like an authentic American bomber pilot from the 40s? It's not like Catch-22 is my favorite book or something. Wait. Catch-22 is my favorite book. I guess I'm just no good at written impressions. I assure you it sounds exactly what you'd expect from an American pilot in the Forties if you heard me do the impression live. Also, this is probably the last month of my life where I'll be able to say, "Catch-22 is my favorite book." Because I'm over 500 pages into Gravity's Rainbow and it's just as fucking amazing as everybody who has pretended to read it says it is. This issue begins with Guy Gardner regaining consciousness after having been violently assaulted by his employer.

Why was the mouse glowing green?!

In my memory, Guy Gardner's change from dickhole to sweetest guy on the team came after Batman punched his lights out. But apparently that isn't the case. It's possible this new whack on the head is the cause or maybe it's something a bit later. I bet an editorial mandate came down which said they couldn't have Guy suffer serious head trauma from Batman punching him. So they had to add this new scene where Guy basically gives himself the head trauma that results in a catastrophic change in personality. The Justice League didn't quite finish destroying The Gray Man last issue so that story gets resolved pretty quickly this issue. Doctor Fate transported him to the Realms of Order where a big blob of Order disintegrates him. Which is what he ultimately wanted. It's what we all ultimately want. It's just you don't know that you want it until you've lived long enough for all the wonder to be bled out of life. That's why he's the Gray Man! Some people think life's too short but at 49, I'm beginning to suspect that it's way too fucking long.

This comic book passes the Reverse Bechdel Test: "Any story that has only one woman in it and every scene she's in, she's treated like a sexual object."

With The Gray Man out of the way, it's time to get to the important part of the story: turning the Justice League of America into Justice League International! I wonder how many people this change pissed off in the 80s? Fucking globalist woke elite bubble bullshit! People talk in derogatory terms about the coastal bubbles but they absolutely shouldn't. I won't disagree that I grew up in a totally different environment in the San Francisco Bay Area than people who grew up in the Midwest. A bubble? Sure. But it was a fucking good thing. I was recently showing the Non-Certified Spouse some of the station breaks from local stations in the late 70s and early 80s out of San Francisco and she was amazed at the representative shorts these stations presented, especially KTVU's "Bits and Pieces." Sure, there were the ones about ethics and morality humorously presented with a horse and bulldog puppet. But there were also the ones that showed different ethnicities and their lives, often ending with "I'm proud to be a Chinese American!" or "I'm proud to be a Black American!" The one about Japanese Americans even mentioned how Japanese families were put in interment camps during World War II. One was about Italian Americans and instead of Italian history, it just showed Italian art and various activities of people in the Italian community. One of the Japanese American shorts just had a Japanese American kid having to explain how he was tired of answering questions about being Japanese in America because he was fourth generation and just American as anybody else. But I guess that kind of commie pinko hogwash is why I'm a big fat America hating socialist! As I was saying before my politics politely interrupted (my politics interrupting impolitely would look like this: Trump voters should be forced to shit in their own mouths for all eternity), the main thrust of this story is to set up Justice League International. Judging by the cover, that means hiring some guy with a bucket on his head from Russia and Captain Atom, another white American male.

Ah yes! The introduction of the best character of the series: Big Barda!

Big Barda might not be on the team but at least there's another female character. Sure, Doctor Light was sort of on the team for three pages. And pretty soon, Fire and Ice will join. But it's mostly just been poor Black Canary having to put up with Booster and Blue Beetle's jokes about banging her. Max and J'onn discuss the United Nations possibly backing the Justice League while Superman talks respectfully with President Reagan. What a mistake! The biggest do-gooder on the planet normalizing fucking Ronald Reagan! He should be scolding him with a liberal smattering of Kryptonian tsk-tsks! That's when a Kryptonian gives you a little burst of heat vision every time you deny the AIDS crisis or invoke the spectre of Welfare Queens or destroy the economy by lowering the top marginal tax rates pretending that the money saved will trickle down to everyone instead of fat corporate cats simply keeping all the extra for bonuses and investors. Fuck that guy. I'm so mad now!

Of all the digs they could have taken with Reagan, they poke fun of his dementia?! Christ, Giffen and DeMatteis.

Hal Jordan drops by headquarters to give Guy a good talking-to but Guy doesn't need it because he's suffered a traumatic head injury on top of his brain damage alongside Batman's sucker punch to the face and now he's Mister Sweetbeans. And because he's acting so nice, nobody gives a shit that this is actually a medical emergency. Backing Maxwell Lord is a computer satellite in space. Is it Brother Eye already?! Are they already working together in 1987?! Or is it just some alien gizmo from the Millennium bullshit coming up? I don't remember! Heck, this Maxwell Lord might even be a Manhunter! Anyway, the satellite begins destroying shit on Earth with a giant heat beam. The Justice League, having nearly nobody who can do anything about it, doesn't call Superman to fix the problem. Instead, they decide to spend precious hours borrowing a space shuttle from STAR Labs to launch them into space to battle the space station. Also, they leave Guy Gardner back at headquarters on monitor duty. Because who needs the guy with experience battling in space with a ring that can protect every other member of the League while in space? Also the ring is the greatest weapon in the universe. So, you know, sideline that guy, right?

It's possible this was in the era where Superman couldn't survive in space either, really. But then that's even more incentive to get fucking Guy Gardner up there with them!

The Justice League manages to stop the satellite's destruction but mostly only because it was a huge set-up so every nation could see them save the world. Everybody wants them defending the planet now so the United Nations agrees to back them with one condition: two new members, one to pacify the U.S. and one to pacify the U.S.S.R.

I've read a lot of ridiculous things in comic books but Rocket Red's power levels being nearly equal to Captain Atom's might be the most ridiculous.

I love how Captain Atom's power level is 9+ but Rocket Red's power level is 8.43 instead of 8+. I guess the accuracy of whatever system they're using breaks down over 9. Captain Marvel quits the team and Batman steps down as leader so J'onn can lead. And that's about it, I guess! The issue ends with some kind of flim-flam about how its the 80s and we've become a global world and boundaries just don't work anymore and superheroes are cool as shit. I guess it's inspirational or something. There's still just one woman on the team though. Justice League International #7 Rating: B. Seven issues in and the Justice League has defeated two villains who weren't actual threats to anybody. They were just scams to get the Justice League some press. They also beat up and killed an old guy who was just frustrated with the boredom that came with the immortality the Lords of Order forced on him. So all in all, they're nearly as terrible as the New Titans who practically only ever battled relatives while putting the residents of New York City in danger every time.

[bllsbailey]

Fixing the Military Requires a Dying Art Called 'Leadership'

On this Independence Day, we all know our military has been shattered into fragments of what it was back in the early 1990s, when it was the undisputed most lethal force on earth and certainly one of the greatest armies in human history. America’s victory in Desert Storm, nearly forgotten by a force now more concerned with the strategic threat allegedly posed by warm weather and with catering to the gender-delusional, was on par with the victories of Hannibal, Alexander, and Caesar. That’s no exaggeration. A Cold War military that spent decades ready to hold the Fulda Gap against the red hordes annihilated a nation’s entire military in 100 hours and barely broke a sweat. But today, our military is a disaster. It can’t win wars and it can’t even convince normal Americans to join or stay very long if they do. This disaster has to be undone, and only a Trump victory can do that. Another Biden term and it’s over, but after President Golem botched the debate we have a good chance of getting Trump 2.0 and a shot at rescuing our men and women in uniform from the Perfumed Princes of the Pentagon.

So, how do you go about fixing the Pentagon? 

You start with leadership. Not just shinier stuff. Not smarter policies. Not better plans. Good, solid, old-fashioned leadership. That’s the key.

Yes, we have terrible procurement problems. Our equipment is aging, and we cannot seem to buy effective new gear for a reasonable price within a reasonable timeframe. And yes, we are a strategic mess, with a senior officer corps that has failed to grapple with our real enemies and instead focuses on the trendy boogeymen that terrify leftist civilian poobahs, like “extremism” and the climate hoax. But the most pressing issue our military faces is cultural. Without morale, and without a laser-focus on winning, you will fail. Our military today is less a military than a huge, woke HR department that occasionally drops bombs. 

War is a people business. Our people are alienated. They feel abused and betrayed because they have been. They sense our strategic drift. They do not trust our uniformed leaders, and not unreasonably. The generals’ and admirals’ grotesque betrayal of the troops during COVID was a disaster, but that was only one of many failures. Getting our troops killed in Kabul – with no accountability for the people in charge might I add – was another. Whoever put our magnificent warriors at Abbey Gate under those conditions should be making big rocks into little rocks at Leavenworth, not enjoying a cush retirement gig on the board of some outfit like Boeing.

But heaven forbid a trooper misplace his M4 – now that’s a real crisis!

We need real military leadership again, starting at the top. We need a new commander-in-chief, but we also need a new Secretary of Defense, one who leads our military instead of managing it. He cannot be a bureaucrat cloistered in a fancy office in the Pentagon and hope to fix this mess. The Secretary of Defense, though a civilian, is in the chain of command, so he should command. He must get his intent out there in no uncertain terms. He must expect that his orders reforming the military be swiftly and efficiently carried out. And he must nuke any resistance he gets without hesitation or mercy.

A commander who doesn’t command is no commander. He’s a joke, a clown, a Vindman. We’ve had far too many of them in the officer corps for far too long.

The next Secretary of Defense must be a veteran, someone who has commanded soldiers in uniform. Certainly, the task facing the next Trump SecDef is a bit more complex than that of a new company or battalion commander taking command, but the principles of leadership are the same. You take “command.” You don’t take “suggestion.” You don’t take “go along, get along.” You take command.

You get one chance to set the tone. Go in soft, and ramping up is nearly impossible when you find people are not doing what you direct. Go in hard. Firm. Clear. Not jerky, not obnoxious. Too often bad leaders mistake angry and mean for clear and firm. The troops want a commander who takes charge and sets out a clear and commonsense intent to accomplish the mission. He must give the orders – not suggestions – to move the military toward his objective, a lethal combat-oriented force. The new SecDef needs to do that on Day One.

How does this work in practice? What does it look like at the Pentagon on Day One of the Second Trump administration? 

He must immediately re-establish that the United States Armed Forces is a military organization and will function as such. This is a resource-tight environment – there’s no time or money for fluff or nonsense. Anything that does not go toward deterring or destroying America’s enemies must go. That’s the guiding principle, and he must take steps to implement that by making unequivocal changes to the current regime.

First, get rid of DEI. It’s done, over, gone. No more “X Month,” not more babble about how “diversity is our strength.” Our strength is our strength, meaning our ability to kill the enemy. The diversity pap posters come down, the civilian DEI personnel are terminated as excess, and any uniformed personnel in DEI slots are reassigned to real jobs. This will be accomplished in seven days; each joint chief will report personally to the SecDef that it has been done. When asked if his order has been carried out, the only acceptable answer is “Yes, sir.”

Some of those joint chiefs will be new because some are getting retired on Day One. They are lucky – in the future, fired generals and admirals will not be allowed to retire at their current rank. Relieved officers will be retired at the rank at which they last served satisfactorily, and that’s never the rank they held when they were fired. This innovative personnel management policy will work wonders to focus the attention and action of our senior military leaders.

Second, the priority is fighting and the skills that go along with fighting. No more climate hoax nonsense, no more babble about green tanks, no more non-military military education—the military academies and war colleges have lost their way. Their job is to turn out killers. Too often, they turn out woke losers. Fire the heads of all the service schools and replace them with new leaders who get that their mission is to churn out fighters, not schmoozers.

Third, rebuild the trust the military lost because of its COVID policies and the pandemic of toxic leaders at the unit level. Focus on unit-level leadership. Make it clear that the noncommissioned officer corps is the backbone of the military – it’s what made our military work back when it did work. There is such thing as “NCO business” that officers should have no part of – officers don’t know how to conduct sergeant’s business, and when they try, they not only screw up but they tell their NCOs that they don’t trust them. The SecDef’s choice – he must make it his choice – for the senior enlisted advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (SEAC) is a critical one. The SecDef should snag the SEAC from the chairman and keep him close by his side as his personal sanity tester and bullSchiff detector.

He must rebuild the officer corps. Too often, our troops see not warfighters but timeservers and ticket-punchers in command who chose their careers over taking care of their troops. That needs to end. Not everyone is fit to be a commander even if they hold the required rank – the formal board system to assign officers to command slots has failed. The new SecDef must take a hands-on approach to pick aggressive, capable future leaders within the force as George Marshall did with his legendary notebook of officers to watch. Scrap the boards and have the SecDef and his designees manage the officer corps directly. Personnel is policy. The SecDef must pick his team down to the O5 (lieutenant colonel and Navy commander) level. Some will call subjective assignments unfair; what’s unfair is saddling our troops with commanders who look good on paper but can’t lead or fight.

The bureaucracy will attempt to bury the SecDef in the bowels of the Pentagon so it can co-opt him using the mushroom treatment – keep him in the dark and feed him manure. He must physically break out of there and reserve blocks of time to visit the field. He should start Day One by walking the Pentagon halls and dropping in on his troops – it’s called “leadership by walking around,” and it works. 

He needs to make short-notice trips to see what’s really happening elsewhere. “Ladies and gentlemen, this afternoon I am flying to – let’s see – how about Newport News to look at ships? I want a helicopter on the pad in an hour. Don’t tell the base commander. It’ll be a surprise.” And then he needs to go, along with some Navy subject matter expert straphangers, and ask questions like, “Admiral, why is that destroyer covered in rust instead of gleaming? Wait, let me ask your second-in-command because he’s now in charge since you are relieved.”

The SecDef cannot be everywhere, so he needs personal representatives outside of Pentagon channels to visit bases to find out the ground truth in the field and reinforce the SecDef’s intent. They should be pairs of retired senior officers and senior noncommissioned officers. Having NCO participation is critical. Private Jones knows the real story but he won’t tell some retired colonel. He will tell a retired first sergeant. These Special Representatives of the Secretary of Defense will be his independent eyes and ears. They need a travel budget and the credentials that make clear that they are present on the SecDef’s personal behalf. After the first general who tells the SecDef’s reps they can’t come onto his airbase gets relieved, that will be the end of the overt resistance.

But there will be covert resistance to the SecDef’s reforms. That’s why he must trim the Pentagon’s bloated civilian staff starting Day One. There is a lot of talk about how you cannot fire civil service personnel. That’s not so – you just have to do it right. And you don’t necessarily need to fire them – you can solve the problem by transferring them. Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska will get a bunch of new civilian workers. But mostly you have to work the system. Fire them or move them and then let them fight it. By the time their case is resolved, the SecDef will be retired and the lazy civil servant will be old.

There are many specific things the new SecDef must do, but a single general one. He must lead. This next Secretary of Defense cannot be a bureaucrat and hope to fix the primary problem with our military – the fact that it has stopped functioning like a military. This is why we fail to win wars. This is why our enlistees and junior officers leave the service. This is why vets dissuade young people from joining. We definitely cannot have another failure like Robert McNamara or Mark Esper. But we also do not necessarily need a George Patton or a Douglas MacArthur. Another George Marshall or Dwight Eisenhower, commanders who commanded without fanfare, would be great. Regardless, we need a real leader in the Pentagon. And starting Day One of Trump 2.0, he needs to lead.

Follow Kurt on Twitter @KurtSchlichter. Get the eighth volume in the Kelly Turnbull People’s Republic series of conservative action novels set in America after a notional national divorce, the bestselling Amazon #1 Military Thriller, Overlord! And get his new novel of terrorism in America, The Attack!

Look, you need to keep up the fight by joining Townhall VIPright now. You get access to a bunch of great stuff, not the least of which is my extra Wednesday Column, my weekly Stream of Kurtiousness videos every Friday, and the Unredacted podcast every Monday! Plus, some stuff from Larry O’Connor – and a bunch of other stuff.

[jewish-privilege]

In October 2015, I found myself in a frightening situation: My name and face on a Neo-Nazi website identifying me as a Jew along with several hundred other Jews in politics, civics, and philanthropy. The website, which I will not name, warned its readers that Jews were too influential in American life; that we were a corruptive influence on America. While it didn’t advocate actually killing me, I was marked as a person to be silenced.

“How likely are these people to actually kill me?” I asked the expert at the Southern Poverty Law Center, an anti-hate group that researches white supremacist groups. I had called them seeking answers. My husband was sitting beside me, his face full of fear. I felt a tiny kick, a flutter inside me, my hands dropping to my belly. “I should probably mention that I am 8 months pregnant.”

There was a pause at the end of the line. “It’s very rare for these threats to escalate offline,” the nice man began. “They want to scare you. They want to scare you so much you decide that you never want to write again. That’s their goal. What you decide to do next is a personal decision.”

You can see that I decided to keep writing. But thinking back on the advice he gave me, it almost seems quaint: In the four years since those threats, especially since the 2016 election, white supremacists spewing anti-Semitic hatred have marched in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us,” shot up synagogues in Pittsburgh and California, and murdered gay Jewish student Blaze Bernstein. Anti-Semitic assaults are up 105% since 2017, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s annual audit on American anti-Semitism. More Jews have been killed in anti-Semitic violence around the world in 2018 than in the last several decades, according to the Kantor Center, based out of Tel Aviv University, which researches and analyzes global anti-Semitism. In New York City, a major center of Jewish culture and life, the NYPD has reported an 82% spike in anti-Semitic hate crimes in 2019. In fact, Jews are reporting the highest number of religion-based hate crimes — this is particularly troubling given that Jews are only approximately 2.2% of the U.S. adult population.

And while the majority of incidents and assaults are committed by white supremacists on the right, there has been a concerning spike in incidents and rhetoric from the left wing, too...

As a child growing up in Boston, I knew anti-Semitism existed. I even experienced it from time to time — including when my childhood synagogue was defaced with a swastika. But overall I felt safe in America... I was grateful for a country that had provided Jews with peace and prosperity. America was a rare safe place for us.

Today, that’s different. The baby I was pregnant with is now a thriving, rambunctious toddler. But when we tour Jewish preschools, my first question isn’t about education philosophy, recess or student teacher ratios — it’s always about security. In just a few short years we’ve gone from history to fear.

To understand what can be done, first we need to understand what it is: Anti-Semitism is the hatred of Jews as a distinct people, as opposed to anti-Judaism that targets our religious beliefs and practices. Anti-semitism is a conspiracy theory. It depicts Jews as a cabal secretly controlling the world for evil ends, hurting innocent people to further greedy, cruel agendas. How those agendas manifest changes based on your worldview. If you are far left, it may be that Jews are imperialists who start wars to enrich themselves. If you’re a white nationalist, it’s that Jews are the ringleaders of the White Genocide. If you’re Minister Louis Farrakhan, it’s that Jews were the secret orchestrators of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Anti-Semitism is an ancient, chameleonic monster. It adapts to circumstances and seemingly new excuses for age-old prejudices to take hold. This is especially true in periods of political and economic insecurity.

...It doesn't help that we are also living in an era when conspiracy theories can so easily spread (from anti-Obama birtherism to Pizzagate to QAnon). President Trump and his cohorts on the far right capitalize and promote them, fomenting hatred and division through fake news and an assault on the truth. They accuse prominent Jews like George Soros of treacherous crimes, while consorting with and justifying white supremacists and their actions (“very fine people” Trump called them.). They act shocked and appalled when fear mongering, the mainstream legitimization of white nationalists, and dangerously lax gun control leave them with blood on their hands (as it did at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue).

And yet while I fear anti-Semitism on the right will lead to more violence, I fear anti-Semitism on the left will cause that violence and hate to go unchallenged. As American Jews face rising hate crimes and domestic terrorism, progressives have grappled with a string of unsettling scandals. At first, it was the way left wing groups downplayed anti-Semitism. In the wake of the 2016 election, for example, the Women’s March conspicuously left anti-Semitism off its unity principles, while left wing groups erased it as a core issue in Charlottesville, and were silent during hundreds of JCC bomb threats. Then it got worse. The anti-Semitism scandal surrounding Women’s March leadership unfolded over several tense months, during which they publicly associated with anti-Semitic Farrakhan and engaged in anti-Semitic dog whistling and bullying.

This controversy was followed by statements by freshman Representative Ilhan Omar, in which she fell into anti-Semitic tropes referencing dual loyalty, foreign allegiance, and Jewish money in her criticisms of Israel. Omar had many defenders who dismissed the charges because Omar herself faces Islamophobia and racism. But such tropes do feed the beast. As Ilhan Omar struggled to contain criticism and put forth multiple apologies for her comments, David Duke, the Grand Wizard of the KKK, came to her defense dubbing her the “Most Important Member of Congress.” It’s not to say that Omar should be held accountable for the words of David Duke. But it does indicate the way anti-Semitism — be it from the left or the right — can connect to amplify the threat.

While the Women’s March has taken positive steps to mend fences, like expanding Jewish leadership in the organization and including Jewish women in their Unity Principles, and Omar and the New York Times have apologized, the situations have led to increased division as anti-Semitism continues to spread, and becomes a political wedge issue, all of which creates increased danger for the Jewish community. In a time of increased concern about Jewish security, these scandals have had a devastating emotional impact on the Jewish community. We were taught by our grandmothers to watch for signs of danger — hateful words from across the political spectrum is one of them.

Over the past three years, I have seen anti-Semitism break and undermine strong community relationships and budding movements for justice. This what anti-Semitism does: It attacks democracy and transparency, giving authoritarian actors scapegoats for national problems. It endangers women, people of color, and immigrants as it strengthens and animates white nationalism, xenophobia, and extremist movements.

American Jews know this intrinsically and are frightened. The jump from hate speech to exterminatory violence has been a short one in the history of global Jewry. Many of us were taught about the dangers of anti-Semitism and how quickly it could rise against us from very young ages, especially for those of us who had family who were Holocaust survivors or who endured violence against Jews in the Middle East or Soviet Union. We need Americans to listen to our fear and take a stand.

The first step is to call it out when we see it in our houses of worship, living rooms, libraries, college campuses and kindergartens. This doesn’t mean we dismiss or “cancel” our friends, families, colleagues, and community leaders who engage in anti-Semitism. It means we tell them they are wrong. We educate. Jewish history is over 5,000 years old, and learning what narratives have been used to oppress Jews can be lifesaving. And then, let’s build relationships between communities that are under attack and frightened.

...This is what we need to do for each other: Come together to fight not just anti-Semitism but racism, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, ableism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia. If we learn each other’s histories, warning signs and dangers and fight for each other, we can make the monsters afraid of us. 

[clexa--warrior]

Hey, Have You Heard About This Coronavirus Thing? Crazy Shit, Right? (Ferret/Shower Cap)

History texts depicting this period will read like deranged Choose Your Adventure books written by sadists; no matter how frantically you flip backwards, you just can’t seem to find the page when you still had the option to vote for the really smart lady with the email server. Anyway, join me for a quick news round-up, it won’t take long, and when we’re done, I give you permission to run away to join a roving Thai monkey street gang.

(As always, find this post WITH nifty news links here: http://showercapblog.com/hey-have-you-heard-about-this-coronavirus-thing-crazy-shit-right/)

For those of you just waking up from a Rip Van Winkle nap, the United States is facing a massive, coast-to-coast, health crisis, whose tragic consequences have exploded exponentially because our Idiot Manchild President really believed, in that churning campground septic tank he calls a mind, that protecting his personal approval ratings by understating the problem was more important than the health and safety of the American public. I don’t know what you can call that but murder. On the one hand, it’s weird to say “wow, the President murdered a bunch Americans through boneheaded, unforgivably selfish, neglect,” but we already saw him get away with precisely that crime in Puerto Rico, so here we are.

Now, I have come to expect malice from the federal government under Hairplug Himmler, but sometimes their capacity for raw, senseless, evil still shocks me. This is my way of saying that, until they got fucking caught, the Department of, and Someone Should Slap the Word Out of Their Filthy Mouths, Justice attempted to remove CDC fliers offering potentially life-saving information regarding the coronavirus from...immigration courtrooms. My God. What a small but potent horror. Feels like the work of an ambitious intern in Stephen Miller’s office, doesn’t it? Trying to impress the boss? Just a sinister little trick, to spread a little more pain, a little more misery, a little more death in an already vulnerable, and whatta-coincidence-nonwhite, community? Fuck these awful, awful, people.

It seems President Liposuction Clinic Dumpster has been calling up leading Taliban terrorists on a secret U.S. kill-or-capture list, presumably to trade tips n’ tricks on how to undermine the USA at home and abroad. Now, negotiating with these murderous dirtbags is a big diplomacy no-no (and of course Donnie Dotard got rolled anyway) but in all honestly, if I had access to a secret kill list contact sheet, I’d probably give in to the temptation to make some prank calls. “Is your refrigerator running? Yeah? Are you sure it’s not a FLEET OF DRONES ABOVE YOU RIGHT NOW?”

For Jeff Sessions, the wages of sin turned out to be a faceful of Trump-branded fecal matter, as the Candycorn Skidmark, whose campaign Ol’ Beauregard embraced way back before fascism was cool in conservative circles, endorsed his opponent in the coming Alabama Senate runoff. How must it feel to have been the very fellow who flipped the switch on the Rube Goldberg/Mousetrap Board Game device that destroyed America, and to watch the machine work its destructive magic for years, only to realize it’s also got one special crotch punt in store for just you personally. I’d feel bad for Bilbo Bigot, if it he weren’t, y’know, one of the very worst people alive.

Alex Jones got arrested for drunk driving, and, upon his release, got right back to work selling...sigh...selling some bullshit toothpaste that he’s telling the rubes magically cures the coronavirus. Authorities are cracking down on Jones and fellow charlatan Jim Bakker over their odious snake oil peddling enterprises, but I don’t know what’s more shocking and disappointing to me, that there are such vile fuckwads in the world, who seek to profit off the fear of the misinformed during times of crisis, or that said fuckwads have so many blind, willing, disciples?

Speaking of fuckwads, Ron Johnson seems to have backed down, for now at any rate, from his quest to stage a show trial for Hunter Biden in the U.S Senate. And that’s awesome and all, but never forget how ready, how eager, RoJo has been, to corruptly manipulate the vast powers of the government for his democracy-stomping Turdlord’s political benefit. Ron is the kind of fellow you’d have found stamping documents outside trains bound for Dachau.

But yeah, I suppose the big story is still that coronavirus thing. Great choice on evolution’s part, the way symptoms don’t necessarily manifest right away, so we can spread that shit around without knowing we’re even infected. Anyway, I made sure to thoroughly disinfect tonight’s blog before posting, and medical professionals inform me that though the virus can linger on plastic and metal surfaces for as long as days, it cannot survive on a poo joke, so please rest easy, knowing you can safely consume this content in comfort. Unless you're reading it next to somebody with the coronavirus, but that's on you, kid.

The Shart Administration has actually slowed progress in this crucial fight, by classifying high-level coronavirus meetings, because they’re more worried about congressional oversight of their crimes n’ fuckups than they are about OUR LIVES, and y’know what, I do believe I’ll be voting Democrat this November.

And of course, many conservatives are more concerned with blaming the virus on the Chinese than preventing its spread; by gum, there’s no need to abandon yer principles, even when your ineptitude is getting countless folks sick and/or killed! “We may be a cabal of dangerously incompetent assclowns, but let none forget that we are also RACIST assclowns!”

With the stock market finally catching up to the rest of the world in noticing a pudding-brained twit had inexplicably been placed in charge of the most powerful nation in history, Pumpkin Spice Pol Pot oozed into the Oval Office for a prime time speech, and if his goal was “fuck up the entire world as much as humanly possible in ten short minutes,” then he succeeded beyond his wildest imaginings.

It was a speech that completely failed to reassure, instead reminding the world that this drooling manbaby, this bathtub drain hair clog in an ill-fitting suit, truly is President of the Entire United Fucking States, and not only is he light years out of his element but he’s probably spending most of his time practicing his “the world is ending, you have to go out with me now” phone call to Salma Hayek rather than pursuing desperately-needed solutions.

Despite being on teleprompter, with the text of the fucking speech right fucking in front of him, Dorito Mussolini somehow managed to catastrophically misrepresent his own administration’s policies, dropping one more cartoon anvil on the stock market’s already-throughly-bludgeoned ballsack. This is, of course, on top of nonsensical non-solutions like banning travel from Europe, when the virus had already had weeks to spread throughout the country thanks to presidential bungling and neglect.

For 73 years, this cretin has somehow never encountered a problem he couldn’t lie, buy, or bully his way out of, but COVID-19 doesn’t care how much money your daddy gave you, little man. And may I say, on behalf of the thousands who are about to become sick, fuck you. Fuck you eternally with a rusty shovel, for daring to take on such an important job without the skills, temperament, or character to execute its duties. Asshole.

In contrast, Smilin’ Joe Biden gave a speech of his own; calm, collected, solemn, and filled with concrete steps to address the problems facing the nation. And America collectively went, “Oh right, it’s actually highly abnormal to have a gibbering, rectum-mouthed, dolt for a President, and we can actually have a decent, competent, one again! Soon!” It was like leadership porn. I got aroused.

Meanwhile, our already-hopelessly-overmatched Golf Cheat in Chief is multitasking, lobbing missiles at Iran-backed militias in Iraq. I’m just hoping the buttons on his desk are clearly labeled, y’know? Or at least that there’s somebody hanging around who can tackle him before he bombs Seattle and launches 500 respirators at Tehran.

So, um, in the midst of this once-in-generation shitstorm, I guess Sarah Palin dressed up in a bear suit to perform “Baby Got Back” on a reality television program. I’m not a religious person, honestly, but I’m increasingly open to the idea that there is a God, and that s/he’s been on a meth bender since mid-2016.

Social distancing is the zany new anti-dance craze sweeping the nation as we all do our damndest to not get sick and die! As a result, public gatherings are getting called off left and right. March Madness, MLB, NBA, PGA, SXSW, Broadway...personally, I don’t think I fully appreciated the scope of this crisis until I saw the XFL shut down their season. Like, are we even America anymore without one billionaire’s sad attempt to reboot his once-failed vanity project?

As sensible organizations all over the world made painful but obviously necessary sacrifices to, y’know, slow the spread of a deadly disease and save lives, naturally the Velveeta Vulgarian was among the last holdouts, canceling his precious hate rallies only grudgingly, because the safety of even his own fervent base is secondary to the sugar rush of their rageful cheers, filling, if only for a moment, that empty space within him where most people have a soul.

Now more than ever, I am brimming over with gratitude that we took the House back in 2018. Thank god there’s a little leadership, a little accountability, a little common frickin’ sense in Washington now. And thank god for Katie Porter, one of the standouts in a freshman class packed with absolute ass-kickers, cornering the CDC chief into exercising his legal authority to make coronavirus testing free for every American. Imagine if Kevin McCarthy were running the House right now. He’d be fleeing from reporters, in mismatched loafers, trying to sell the public on a bill bailing out nothing but Trump University and Marm-a-Lago.

Well, the Emperor of Hemorrhoids finally buckled and declared (acknowledged) a state of emergency over the coronavirus, which is admittedly a pleasant change from his previous “do everything I possibly can to help the fucker spread” position. We’re still woefully behind, and god only knows how deeply the virus has penetrated while the doddering old bastard diddled and dawdled, but the good news is, the President of the United States finally moved his bloated ass out of the road so we can get to work cleaning up his mess, which is, I suppose, as close to an act of kindness as he’s come in his entire misspent, treacherous, life.

In the middle of today’s press conference, Vice President Mike Pants paused to give Boss Turdworm a rhetorical handjob seemingly designed to last through an entire 14-day quarantine. Jeeeeesus. Mikey Hairshirt was a man once. Not much of one, to be certain, but at least he didn’t have to worry about the possibility of bored schoolchildren pouring salt on him, which would of course prove swiftly fatal in his current state.

A reporter asked Government Cheese Goebbels, “Hey, if you’re not too busy fellating yourself over fucking up slightly less than you’ve been fucking up for weeks, why the fuck did you close down the pandemic office, you nation-wrecking clod?” and he whinged that the question was “nasty,” before reiterating his refusal to take responsibility for the things that are, objectively, his fault. I truly do not understand how this trembling coward’s approval rating isn’t 0%

So Nancy Pelosi spent the week trying to hammer out an emergency bill with Steve Mnuchin, but Republicans naturally balked at many necessary measures. It’s a tricky spot for the GOP; they can’t risk the mass-extermination of the underpaid labor/consumer force that keeps their donor class filthy rich, but doing anything to improve working folks’ lives is just instinctually anathematic to them. But at the time of posting, it does appear as though a deal has been reached, let’s hope no spray-tanned morons fuck it up, right?

In conclusion, I am sick of typing the word “coronavirus,” and you are sick of reading it, so let’s let’s all retreat to our quarantines for the weekend, okay? Enjoy the solitude! Read that novel you bought back in college! Watch that 425-minute Russian film set in a fish cannery! Hey, you can even peruse the archives at showercapblog.com if you feel like reliving just how the fuck it all came to this! Anyway, if you don’t hear from me for a bit, fear not, I’m turning production of this blog over to Jared Kushner, I’m sure he’ll figure it out.

[cksmart-world]

The completely unnecessary news analysis

by Christopher Smart

October 13, 2020

MIKE LEE: DEMOCRACY ROBS MY MONEY AND LIBERTY

Utah Sen. Mike Lee is an authority on the Constitution — just ask him. “Democracy does not appear in the Constitution and we are not a democracy,” he tweeted. (We are not making this up.) Lee had quarantined himself in his kids' treehouse after testing positive for Covid-19. He may have received the same steroids as President Donald Trump, who sounded agitated when he phoned Fox News and screamed that Sen. Kamala Harris is a “monster” and a “communist.” Lee's neighbors told others in their ward they heard Tarzan-like yodeling from the treehouse. Later a woman was seen looking up in the tree, saying, “I'm not Jane.” But we digress. Lee continued tweeting: “rank democracy threatens liberty, peace and prosperity.” But if you think Lee's loincloth was riding up then, get a load of this: “The far right does not merely view progressive taxation, regulation and the welfare state as impediment to growth, but as fundamentally oppressive.” OK, Wilson, drumroll please. “A political system that truly secured freedom would not allow the majority to gang up on the minority and redistribute their income for themselves.” And then the neighbors heard Tarzan calling the elephants: “Ungowa, ungowa. Abulu, abulu,” which, by the way, is not in the Constitution, either.

FASCIST VS COMMUNIST IN UTAH'S 4TH DISTRICT RACE

Holy tamale, have you seen the election campaign TV ads for Democrat Ben McAdams and Republican Burgess Owens. According to the spots, McAdams is very scary and sets police cars on fire and Owens has gone bankrupt so many times he can't even get a checking account. If you live in the 4th Congressional District, your choice is between Nancy Pelosi's personal lap dog or a graduate of Trump's school of finance. Of course, this is very serious, because if McAdams is reelected, socialism will sweep through and we'll all be eating borsht and drinking cheap vodka. But if Owens unseats him, we'll have to go around saying, “Hiel Trump” and eating bratwurst. What happened to the good old days when candidates didn't prevaricate quite as much. No Wilson, “prevaricate” is not a bodily function. In 2016, McAdams had the 'Ben Bus' ads where people would say, “I'm with Ben,” and hop on. This year, he just goes into old people's living rooms and tells them they most likely will die if Owens is elected. For his part, Owens' TV ads show all kinds of people who say, “Burgess Owens is Utah — and has a wonderful investment plan just for you.”

WHY WE HATE COLUMBUS DAY

Beyond the fact that you can't get a bottle of booze in Utah on Columbus Day, it's just a stupid and lame holiday. In Elementary School we learned that Columbus discovered America in 1492. Wrong — all Columbus discovered was the Bahamas and Hispaniola. A year or so later, Spanish explorer Amerigo Vespucci discovered Rio de Janeiro. Hence the name America. But neither of those guys got near the United States. The dude who came closest was Leif Eriksson, who landed in Newfoundland, just up the street from Maine. Than was around 985 — 500 years before Columbus or Vespucci. Do we have Eriksson Day? Of course not. Eriksson, we know, was a Viking — folks remembered for plundering and partying. What would Erikkson Day look like? Well, it no doubt would beat the hell out of Columbus Day, which in the end is just a pain in the ass. Some people actually hate Columbus Day because he represents all the European explorers who brought new diseases that killed off many thousands of indigenous people. The white men enslaved and killed the natives in many other ways, too, and the whole, damn New World went straight to hell and now we have traffic jams and bad muzak in shopping malls and cancer from fast food. Thanks, Columbus.

Post script — Wanna get away? Drive aimlessly into the desert, feel the fresh air on your face and welcome that beautiful quiet. Smell the sage and listen to the meadowlarks sing up and down the scales. After a couple of weeks you might begin to relax and enjoy simple pleasures, like the moon rising gloriously over the mountains each evening. You wouldn't worry about Covid-19 or Donald Trump. There wouldn't be a thought about those militia guys in bad camo with ARs strapped to their chest who look like they might try to kidnap someone, a governor, maybe. And then, it might dawn on you that this country has gone totally bat-shit. So you might go looking for the Goshute Indian Reservation out by the Deep Creek Mountains. You might say to them, look we screwed you guys over and everything, but would it be alright if we stay. And then maybe you'd go native and drop off the grid and none of those horrible people could find you. Well, as Jake Barnes said to Lady Brett Ashley in The Sun Also Rises, “It's pretty to think about.”

OK, Wilson, that about does it for another week here at the Smart Bomb Ranch, where buckaroos and buckarooettes are always welcome to dip their cup into the well and whet their whistle with agua fresca. So get your fiddle and the guys in the band and take us out till next week:

He came dancing across the water With his galleons and guns Looking for the new world In that palace in the sun On the shore lay Montezuma With his coca leaves and pearls In his halls he often wandered With the secrets of the worlds

And his subjects Gathered 'round him Like the leaves around a tree In their clothes of many colors For the angry gods to see

He came dancing across the water Cortez, Cortez What a killer

( Cortez What A Killer — Neil Young)

PPS — During this difficult time for newspapers please make a donation to our very important local alternative news source Salt Lake City Weekly at PressBackers.com, a nonprofit dedicated to help fund local journalism. Thank you.

[atheistforhumanity]

An Unstable Leader Marches Toward an Unstable War

Over the past week there has been a quickly escalating tit for tat between the U.S. and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Most notably, Trump made a vastly disproportioned assignation of the IRGC’ s general, Quasim Soleimani. This has had a quick fallout or rising consequences, which Trump is only threatening to meet with stronger retaliation. 

Before I move on, I want to be clear that I believe these actions by Trump are a clear attempt to save himself from being impeached and get re-elected. His hopes are that the impeachment will be put on hold during this crisis, and that he can ride the historical wave that shows Presidents are usually re-elected during times of war. I view this to be a sociopathic course of actions, and exactly the type of behavior we all feared when he became elected. 

Trump’s actions are part of a clear problematic pattern in his life. He shows no ability to think situations through and weigh the consequences of his actions. Always acting on a whim of selfish desire, whether or not it will harm many others. 

Trump claims the killing of Quasim Soleimani was in retribution for the death of a contractor in an attack on an Iraqi base. However, the administration had already carried out five air strikes around Iraq and Syria. This was the catalyst for Iraqi citizens to attack the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. So, something more proportionate was already done about the attack of the Kirkuk Base. 

The first problem with Trump’s decision is that it was not proportional at all, because Quasim Soleimani was similar to a Vice President in America. He had the same level of power and admiration. While I’m not arguing that nothing should be done about the death of one of our citizens, I am pointing out that it is the duty of a world leader to act proportionally and wisely. Death is an unfortunate inevitability for some of those we send or allow to venture into unstable areas of the world. An act of warlike provocation cannot be the answer to every single live lost. It is neither moral nor sustainable. Wise leaders consider the lives on both sides that will have to pay for their personal anger. This action will almost certainly plunge us into a conflict that will cost thousands of lives. 

A relationship that we have been fostering for fifteen years has been spoiled in foul swoop. Iraq suffered our wrath after 9/11, even though their nation had nothing to do with the attack. Now, after fighting along side them against ISIS for years, Trump has completely disregarded Iraq’s sovereignty as a nation. Historically, this is a series moral issue the U.S. We feel free to play war on anyone’s land who is not powerful enough to stand up for themselves. Can you imagine having drones suddenly drop bombs into civilian areas here at home by other countries, and having no warning or permission from our government? This is what the U.S. does constantly. Furthermore, if you look at the map in this article, you’ll see that the road leading from the International Airport is ridiculously close to the Green Zone. The Green Zone is where most of their government officials live and was made by the U.S. to be insulated from war and show of development. The Green Zone went into immediate lockdown, because they were not made aware of the strikes at all.  The Iraqi people are understandably deeply upset and fed up with the profound lack of respect we show our ally. 

Iraq is now voting to remove our troops from their country. This isn’t finalized yet, as the Iraqi government is divided on this action themselves. However, Trump is already threatening powerful sanctions for Iraq if they dare to stand up for themselves against Trump’s grave disrespect. This will mean that Iraq will be seriously weakened in the fight against ISIS and we will lose our coordination with them. 

The common belief is that the U.S. can push this conflict as far as we want because of our military superiority, and that killing an anti-America general must make us safer. It was publicized that Soleimani had plans to attack U.S. targets, but Pompeo refuses to say how imminent those threats actually were or the details involved. So we can’t even confirm that there was a serious imminent threat. Even worse, this airstrike has pushed Iraq toward being an ally of Iran. Iran exerts a large amount of influence in the middle east as it is, but now we are pushing away allies in that area. What Trump should have considered is that Iran’s vow for retaliation will not come in the form of a traditional attack on the U.S., but it will be against one of our many installations around the world. There is a map from 2015 by Politico on the locations of our known military bases and outposts. If this map is anywhere close to accurate you can see there are many small “lily pads” of less than 200 hundred personnel scattered around the world. Many are spread throughout the Middle East and Africa. A couple soldiers were recently killed in Kenya, by extremists. Iran will certainly look to use it’s influence to carry attacks against our smaller installations, and it could be in any of over a hundred locations. This disproportional attack has put all of our people around the world in imminent danger. While Trump has been praising Putin, who made a serious cyberattack against our government, Iran and Russia have been drawing closer in an effort for Iran to better oppose America. 

Trump has been threatening Iran for sometime over their nuclear program. Trump already ruined any leverage we had over Iran to get them to hold off on their nuclear program. Europe attempted to continue the agreement with Iran, but this airstrike has now pushed Iran to accelerate their nuclear program, with the full intention of creating a weapon. After berating Obama’s approach to handling Iran, Trump has failed at every measure to keep the situation under control. Iran’s development of nuclear capabilities definitely does not make America safer. 

If Trump manages to push us into a full scale war, it will likely drop us into a recession as economists have already been worried one may be coming. At a time when economic inequality is a prime issue in the election, can we afford to put millions or billions into a war after already raising the debt by trillions over the next decade. Lastly, Trump promised to end never ending wars, yet that’s exactly what this situation would be. We would be dragged into battling Iran’s influence all over the middle east, while losing the allies we have there, and completely destabilizing the region all over again. This will undoubtedly lead to a resurgence of ISIS and other anti-American extremist groups. Nothing about these actions will make us safer. 

[scifigeneration]

Eco-disaster films in the 21st century - helpful or harmful?

by Ari Mattes

A scene from the 2017 film Geostorm: many societies have historically attempted to deal with collective trauma by replaying and restaging it in art. Warner Bros., Electric Entertainment, Rat Pac-Dune Entertainment

It seems like every time we switch on the idiot box we are confronted with news footage of another disaster. Bushfires in Australia. A hurricane in North America. A tsunami in Indonesia.

Part of this, of course, is merely a reflection of the sensationalist rationale of commercial news in the first place – in order to sell advertising space, this news needs to be sufficiently engaging to keep people from switching the channel.

But the unfortunate reality of global warming means that natural disasters are becoming more frequent and more severe. And Hollywood cinema has kept pace, offering some recent spectacular depictions of natural disaster in the context of global warming.

Climate change is central to the narrative of the 2004 film The Day After Tomorrow directed by Roland Emmerich. In it, a changing climate leads to a series of extreme storms in a precursor to a cataclysmic shift into a new Ice Age.

The 2015 film San Andreas, meanwhile, looks at the effects of a massive earthquake throughout California.

Geostorm (2017) posits a scientific response to global warming - through the international development of a planetary network of satellites that can control the weather - and what happens when it becomes weaponised.

The latest in this genre of big budget, Hollywood eco-disaster movies is Moonfall slated to begin production in 2020. Emmerich will be directing the $150 million project, which follows a team attempting to stop the moon from colliding with earth after it has been struck by an asteroid.

The script has been co-written by Emmerich and his regular collaborator Harald Kloser - with whom Emmerich wrote the disaster epic 2012, a 2009 film about the race to save the planet as the earth’s core heats up.

Emmerich has described Moonfall as a cross between 2012 and Independence Day (minus the extra-terrestrial element). It’s unclear whether global warming will feature directly in its plot, but given Emmerich’s record of making ecologically aware films, it seems likely.

How, then, do such films help and/or hinder us in managing our anxieties regarding the progressive deterioration of the planet? As natural disasters become more commonplace, is there a point at which we will become too distressed by the real to reproduce it as entertaining spectacle?

A woman wears a mask to protect herself from bushfire-related smoke haze in Sydney this month. Paul Braven/AAP

‘Bad stars’

The term disaster, with its etymology from ancient Greek for “bad star,” has always elicited cosmic allusions. Disaster suggests that the universe is awry; the planets are out of alignment, bad stars are causing chaos and disorder.

The secularisation of disaster in the modern era, through the notion of risk and insurance, attempts to sever this connection to the word’s planetary origins, envisioning it on the scale of the manageable “accident”, which can be insured against.

Yet, in the context of global warming, and following the large-scale atrocities of the 20th century such as the two world wars, the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Holocaust, it’s clear that disasters are far from manageable. One of the ways we have sought to manage our anxieties about disaster is through popular film.

A photo made available by the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum shows a view of the mushroom cloud photographed from the ground during the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan in 1945. Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum handout/EPA

The Hollywood disaster film genre has undergone, roughly, two major cycles. The first was in the 1970s. It included blockbuster melodramas like The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure, and the Airport films (so brilliantly parodied in Flying High).

These cinematic disasters were often instigated by some kind of natural element – an earthquake, or a tidal wave. But they were also often structured around the malfunctioning of technologies in human-built environments (The China Syndrome being a prime example).

The heroes in these films were usually strong, hard-boiled men. Gene Hackman in The Poseidon Adventure, for example, leads, as though by sheer willpower alone, a group to safety following the capsizing of the eponymous ship. As viewers, we are awed by his grim determination in overcoming adversity amid often stark images of people dying.

The second cinematic cycle begins in the 1990s with ecologically sensitive films like Twister, which follows a group of meteorologists as they chase violent tornadoes across Oklahoma, and Dante’s Peak, about the disastrous effects of the eruption of a volcano on a small Washington town. Such films prefigure later, more explicit global warming eco-disaster films, like Emmerich’s masterful The Day After Tomorrow.

While the earlier disaster films were characterised by their ensemble casts and soap-opera like structures, these newer ones dedicate more energy towards showing the disasters (using elaborate CGI and high definition), and imagining social and governmental responses to them.

Affectively, they depend upon the pathos of groups working together to overcome adversity. As in a Christian vigil, the viewer of these films takes solace from participating in this community of suffering.

The Vigil, 1884. Oil on canvas, by John Pettie. Wikimedia Commons

The pleasure of disaster on film

On one level, popular film as “entertainment” offers us reprieve from the petty banalities, inconsistencies and disappointments of everyday life, by giving us a vision of a world ordered into timely narrative. Events are tied together in a fundamentally meaningful fashion.

We are able to defer the concerns of the ordinary for a couple of hours, and participate in a viscerally stimulating and pathos-laden experience. The unwieldy disasters we see in the real world are thereby represented in a contained fashion, allowing us the illusion of conceptual and emotional mastery. But at the same time, this process pacifies us, numbing us to, and distracting us from, reality.

Similarly, our response to disaster films is ambivalent. On one hand, we enjoy watching the ultimately effective responses of the state to the disaster. In The Day After Tomorrow, for example, following some initial bumbling, the US government saves millions of Americans by organising a deal for US migration to Mexico(!)

On the other hand, epic images of full-scale disaster are the visual and visceral centrepieces of these films, and awe and terrify us. Indeed, our most intense pleasure in these films emerges from their sublime images of destruction.

Watching San Francisco fall to pieces in San Andreas is awe inspiring. In The Day After Tomorrow, one of the most sublime sequences involves the ocean swelling and rolling through Manhattan, gathering people and vehicles in its stead after crashing into the Statue of Liberty.

Watching San Francisco fall to pieces in San Andreas is awe-inspiring. New Line Cinema, Village Roadshow Pictures, RatPac-Dune Entertainment

These pleasures in destruction and restoration occur within the context of a more saccharine kind of empathy we feel with the masses of faceless victims. By the films’ endings, we can take solace in the images and acts of community building and collective overcoming. Along with the victims, we mourn worlds destroyed, and are hopeful about worlds beginning to be rebuilt.

The economics of disaster

Hollywood disaster films often feature antagonists who are stubborn bureaucrats and greedy capitalists, but also US presidents who are calm, compassionate and measured, taking an appropriate amount of time to decide how to act and then acting decisively.

In The Day After Tomorrow, this is firstly President Blake (Perry King), who makes cool-headed decisions about the future of America and dies when his motorcade is caught in a storm and destroyed. Later, President Becker (Kenneth Welsh) is magically transformed from a pig-headed obstructionist after he assumes the presidency.

Perry King in The Day After Tomorrow (2004). Twentieth Century Fox, Centropolis Entertainment, Lions Gate Films

This, of course, contrasts with real-life presidential responses to disaster. In 2017, following Hurricane Maria’s devastating effects on Puerto Rico, Donald Trump criticised Puerto Ricans for the economic burden Maria gifted the US government, while simultaneously implying the event wasn’t very bad – not a “real catastrophe” compared to Katrina. This was all while delivering his emergency address on Puerto Rican soil!

At a time in which solidarity and compassion were expected, Trump was criticised by many for making the issue about the US’s economic burden; and yet, like many things Trump does, this inadvertently raised some critical issues surrounding the economics of disaster in the modern era.

US President Donald Trump speaks next to Puerto Rico’s Governor Ricardo Rossello and US First Lady Melania Trump at the Luis Muniz aerial base in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in October 2017. Thais Llorca / POOL/EPA

The imagination of disaster – its preempting, in a sense, its prediction – offers insurers (and the reinsurers who back them), following rapidly updated actuarial tables, a unique opportunity to capitalise on risk.

At the same time, disasters are a boon to some capitalist investors, who are able to buy into the development of new infrastructure for a profit.

Disaster in this way is a chief “innovator”, sucking up surplus capital, offering the most literal realisation of what conservative economist Joseph Schumpeter celebrated as one of the virtues of capitalism – its capacity for “creative destruction”.

Technology and disaster

French philosopher Paul Virilio has argued that the invention of every technology is simultaneously the invention of its accident. The invention of the car, for instance, invents the car crash. While the disaster film is acutely aware of these failures built into every technology, the genre’s relationship towards technology is more complex than outright critique.

Perhaps the most striking ambivalence of disaster films concerns the role – and virtues – of technology in facilitating and overcoming disaster. This is explicitly worked through in “man-made” disaster films like The China Syndrome, The Towering Inferno, and, more recently, Deepwater Horizon.

Natural disaster films like The Day After Tomorrow and Geostorm envision global warming as the product of devastating technological practices, and offer technological solutions to this. In Geostorm, the network of satellites that control the weather malfunction, and rapidly become the cause of even greater disaster as the film progresses.

Geostorm (2017) envisions global warming as the product of devastating technological practices, and offers technological solutions to this. Warner Bros., Electric Entertainment, RatPac-Dune Entertainment

And yet, at a higher level, these films are entirely dependent on cutting edge visual and aural technologies to stage the awe inspiring disasters in the first place. They also require a great deal of investment - of capital, and human labour - and, therefore, create a great deal of waste.

Disaster cinema, in unconsciously teasing out the relationship between technophilia and technophobia, forces us to confront one of most pressing dilemmas of the age of the Anthropocene: should we reflect on and think through the causes of disaster, or use technology to act in the hope of preventing future disasters?

A discourse of technological “solutions” to climate change fits squarely into the logic critiqued by philosopher Timothy Morton in his book Dark Ecology.

Technology, in the first place, depends on the extraction of power from nature, and the conversion of the natural into waste-creating power. Suggesting that something can cohere with a technological “problem: solution” framework is thus perhaps part of the problem itself.

Indeed, the myth that there can be a “growth”-oriented solution to global warming is convincingly undone in one of the key academic works on global warming discourse, Anneleen Kevis and Matthias Lievens’ The Limits of the Green Economy.

By studying Hollywood’s mediations of disaster – its attempts at containment and emotional management – we can perhaps begin to learn something about the ongoing tensions and contradictions that define ecological existence in modernity.

The future of disaster

The sheer frequency of contemporary natural disasters raises the question - is there a point at which we will lose our appetite for watching them staged on film?

I suspect the answer is a resounding “no.” Following September 11, it was commonplace to hear people say the footage of the planes crashing into the World Trade Centre looked like it was from a movie. But what movie? The documentary photo-realism of the footage barely resembled Hollywood’s slick action and disaster spectacles.

More notably, Hollywood films began to adopt the September 11 style after the event itself, with the hand-held, found-footage style realism of films like Cloverfield becoming a cliche by the end of the first decade of the 21st century.

This, once again, exemplifies the comforting finitude popular film narratives offer viewers. The more frequent disasters become, the greater will be the need for emotional management by the corporations that produce popular news and entertainment.

The more desperate people become about global warming - and the emergence of grassroots activist groups like Extinction Rebellion suggests people are becoming increasingly desperate - the more popular media corporations will assuage our anxieties with carefully ordered, pacifying spectacles.

For the last week or so, people have been walking around Sydney with their heads down, eyes red from the smoke, wearing masks to filter the air.

Pedestrians are seen wearing masks as smoke haze from bushfires in New South Wales blankets the CBD in Sydney this week. Steven Saphore)/AAP

This is like something from a disaster film - and similar scenes of the effects and aftermath of catastrophe are continuing to appear around the globe.

Yet, there is no evidence this will curb Hollywood’s appetite for disaster. In fact, cultures and societies - like individuals - have historically attempted to deal with collective trauma by replaying and restaging it in art, from the Chauvet cave paintings to The Longest Day. This may make people feel both better and more helpless at the same time.

About The Author:

Ari Mattes is a Lecturer in Communications and Media at the University of Notre Dame Australia

This article is republished from our content partners over at The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.