If I see the news stories about Gaza or the Middle East that begin with these phrases, I just assume that whatever follows is bullshit:
The Biden Admin is now bombing in Syria. That means the US is involved in armed conflicts in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria, as well as firing on UN troops. (Did I forget any?) Biden is also silent on the American journalist detained by Israel. The US is fully committed to Forever War, independent of the party in power. Crickets from Kamala Harris.
Days are running out until election day. I don’t know how but she needs to separate herself from this travesty. She will have only herself to blame.
Headline from Ahmad Moor's piece in The Nation today. The sad truth.
Democrat or Republican, the next presidency will still mean death for others in faraway places.
I have never been a huge fan of Joe Biden. One of the ironies of his attempt to ease student debt burden is that he was a major sponsor of the legislation in the mid-aughts that made it essentially impossible for sturdent debt holders to declare bankruptcy. He was a Senator from Delaware, where a legislator's main duty is to look out for the interests of banks and credit card companies. And he delivered.
He also was a supporter of W's Iraq War, and was on the weapons-of-mass-destruction bandwagon. His record on tough-on-crime stuff was pretty bad.
I voted for Biden in 2020. He's done some pretty good things as president on the domestic front. Other than his withdrawal from Afghanistan, however, his foreign policy has been pretty bad, pretty much run-of-the mill Cold War stuff.
But the tragedy of his presidency is that his legacy will be that he was in full support of a genocide in Gaza, which is now becoming a regional war. All through this, Biden and his foreign policy team have been all in, with the flow of money and weaponry from American war profiteers increasing.
LBJ did some equally cool things domestically. But his legacy is forever tarnished by the Vietnam War. Biden will deserve the same kind of scorn. If Harris is elected, maybe this will be reversed. I am hopeful, but not optimistic.
Excellent piece by Peter Beinart in today's Guardian. I quote one paragraph below that is a chilling and damning description of the constant failures of American foreign policy during the seven-plus decades of my life, once again repeated in today's Middle East.
The problem with this dynamic is that ruinous foreign policy decisions often enjoy bipartisan support, at least initially. The 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted Lyndon Johnson the authority to escalate America’s intervention in Vietnam, passed the Senate 88-2 and the House 416-0. In 2002, many prominent congressional Democrats – including Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Tom Daschle, then Senate majority leader, and Richard Gephardt, then House minority leader – voted to authorize George W Bush’s invasion of Iraq. And after 7 October, Biden and his Republican opponents vied to show who supported Israel’s war more emphatically.
A quote from Dave Zirin's article in The Nation today (scarily accurate in my opinion):
The Democratic consultant class—the immortal swamp things of DC—only ever seem to have one idea: pitch your campaign to the political center. In 2024, this means trying to win over what are being called “Cheney Democrats”—whatever the hell that means. This strategy apparently requires ignoring your base on domestic issues and horrifying it on foreign policy by funding Israel’s genocide. In our polarized political moment, this is electoral suicide.
The Harris-Walz ticket is running a campaign rooted in the fantasy that there is a centrist wing of the GOP appalled by Donald Trump. For this to work, Trump would need to be an outlier, and a significant section of the GOP would need to be looking for an alternative.
Those reasonable Republicans are gone, if they ever existed. Liz Cheney lost her reelection bid (against a Trumpist stooge) by 30 points, the second-greatest loss of an incumbent member of Congress in US history.
I have always questioned the impulse of Democrats to aim their campaigns to the right, and then blame the ensuing election loss on the left. It seems outright silly to intentionally anagonize people who already want to vote for you, and instead try too woo voters who don't like you and and are unlikely to vote for you no matter what. But the Democratic base doesn't have the insider savviness of the corporate donor/consulting class that always knows better. As I've said before, all they want from the left is their money and their vote; for everything else they want us to shut up.
Okay, so a couple members of my family have convinced me to vote for Harris in November. (Disclaimer: I live in Illinois, so my vote either way doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things anyway. If I lived in a swing state I wouldn't have the luxury of considering a protest vote in the frist place.) I had intended to vote for Cornel West, but my daughter informed me that he wasn't on the ballot in Illinois, as I had assumed. The only way a protest vote would mean anything is if some number of voters--maybe 2-3%--voted for someone like West. This is highly unlikely if a write-in vote is required.
Having said that, I will continue to criticize Biden-Harris-Dems when it is warranted.
Today, I see that Israel sent bombers to the West Bank. And is considering invading Lebanon in the ground. And wants to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. And has declared the UN Secretery General persona non grata.
If there was any doubt in my mind that Israel's goal all along was to create a regional war throughout the entire Middle East (and drag the US into it), there are no doubts anymore.
The US seems to be ready to support such war.
In case there's any doubt about where the Biden/Harris Administration lines up on the Gaza genocide, here's an example of the Biden Department of Education playing a part in getting a (Jewish) college professor fired for opposing the US-supported genocide, accusing her of antisemitism.
If Harris wants to claim a part in the good things that happened under Biden, I will also hold her partly responsible for the bad. And this is bad.
Okay so already this week Biden has doubled down on Trump-like border policies, relaxed environmental rules so that chip makers can pollute even more, and responded to Israel's expanding war by reasserting America's iron-clad commitment to Israel's dangerous aggressiveness. And it's only Tuesday. What's in store for the rest of the week?
(It's interesting that the only country showing restraint in the area is Iran.)
Kamala Harris's response? Crickets.
Israel has expanded the war in the Mideast by bombing the center of the the city of Beirut. The Biden Administration's first response was to reaffirm the US's total commitment to Israel, citing the tired and weary "right defend itself" argument. The only problem is that a high proportion of those from whom Israel seems to be defending itself are children and other civilians. (Israel is now bombing Lebanon, Gaza, and Yemen, as well as killing an increasing number of West Bank residents, not to mention American journalists)
The Administration's other response was to announce that the US would be enhancing its military presence in the Mideast. Hurray for Forever Wars. (Remember that Biden's pick for Secretary of Defense is from Raytheon, one of our bigger war profiteers.) I have been reading story after story over the past year in main stream media about how Biden is trying to keep this from spreading to a region-wide war. This, of course, is total bullshit. Israel wants such a war. Not only is he doing nothing to contain it; the US continues to fund the genocide and carnage, with no strings.
The United States--and most disturbingly the Democratic Party--is absolutely complicit in this. I don't even want to hear about how it would be worse if Trump were president. He's not president, but as far as our Mideast policy is concerned, he might as well be. Absent some sort of strong statement from Kamala Harris, I can't vote for her.
I keep hearing how Israel is our most important and dearest ally. Here's the script:
US to Israel: We need a ceasefire in Lebanon (and Gaza).
Israel to US: Fuck you.
US to Israel: Here's another $8.3 billion.
Some ally. (Not to mention almost no support for our Ukraine policy.)
What's new today? Nothing much. Doesn't seem to matter who is in the White House or Congress, 80-90% of things is this country don't change.
Before Obamacare, the US had the worst healthcare in the world. After Obamacare, it's a little less horrible but still the worst in the world.
Israel has now killed over 41,000 Palestinians (certainly an undercount) and the sitting Democratic president is all in. The money and weapons continue to flow uninterrupted. Some people among the inner circle of Democrats assure us that all that will change if Kamala is elected but that's bullshit. She invited a bunch of Republicans and a crazy-ass sheriff to speak at the Democratic Convention, but vetoed an elected Democratic legislator from doing the same. The big donors are in full support of the genocide and that's who decides. Both parties are controlled by rich people, just different ones. Harris has said almost nothing about what her policy would be in Gaza or the West Bank. The Dems have shown zero empathy, much less solidarity, with the anti-genocide protesters. (Cornel West is the only presidential candidate I know of who has. He was actually there among the protesters.) Establishment Democrats have actually gone out of their way to label people oppsed to genocide as antisemitic. (Might as well lock arms with Elise Stefanik.)
Border and immigration policy is essentially unchanged from Trump, the Dems just speak more softly about it, but the policy is just as cruel. Our idiotic Cuba policy is the same as before Biden came into office. Israel and Saudi Arabia assassinate American journalists. Neither Trump nor Biden have held anyone accountable.
We get lectures from the centrists and the Hillary Clintons of the world about not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Well, that's the reason we end up with crappy policies like those above. If a Trump presidency would be dangerous (and I agree that it would), that's all the more reason to do more than say "I'm not Trump".
Here are a couple quotes from some old posts. Some favorutes of mine worth revisiting every now and then
First one was written in the 1930s, published in the early 1940s:
"A civilization which for any reason puts a human life at a
disadvantage; or a civilization which can exist only by putting human
life at a disadvantage; is worthy neither of the name nor of
continuance. And a human being whose life is nurtured in an advantage
which has accrued from the disadvantage of other human beings, and who
prefers that this should remain as it is, is a human being by definition
only, having much more in common with the bedbug, the tapeworm, the
cancer, and the scavengers of the deep sea."
James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Written in the 1930s but could just as well describe today's 1%:
"For these men were all the victims of an occupational disease--a kind of mass hypnosis that denied to them the evidence of their senses. It was a monstrous and ironic fact that the very men who had created this world in which every value was false and theatrical saw themselves, not as creatures tranced by fatal illusions, but rather as the most knowing, practical, and hard-headed men alive. They did not see themselves as gamblers, obsessed by their own fictions of speculation, but as brilliant executives of great affairs who at every moment of the day 'had their fingers on the pulse of the nation.' So when they looked about them and saw nothing but the myriad shapes of privilege, dishonesty, and self-interest, they were convinced that this was inevitably 'the way things are."
Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again
Quote from an excellent book review in "The Nation" about how American/European policies have created the so-called border crises around the world. The example cited is probably quite typical.
This “pernicious and paradoxical concoction of both limitlessness and strict limits” can be clearly seen, Washington [the book's author] argues, in the “bizarre disruption of the tomato industries between Italy and Ghana.” Ghana is one of the world’s largest importers of tomato paste, with the imports increasing over 1,000 percent between 1996 and 2015. But prior to this stunning rise, Ghana was home to a large, stable tomato industry. So what happened? “Free trade” happened. The rapid destruction of Ghana’s tomato industry came “after the World Trade Organization (WTO) pushed Ghana…to dramatically lower import tariffs,” which opened “space for subsidized foreign vegetables to decimate the local industry.” The structural adjustment forced Ghanaian farmers to seek work elsewhere, many in Italy. These farmers who once grew tomatoes in Ghana now grew them in Italy, to be shipped back home to further erode the country’s domestic agricultural market. Many of these migrants, Washington notes, “live in segregated clusters of shacks outside of towns where they have limited or no access to running water, electricity, or health care.”
The gutting of the Ghanaian tomato industry not only resulted in the expansion of the Italian and Chinese markets (the two main exporters of canned tomatoes to Ghana) into new territory, but also, and equally as important, resulted in a fresh supply of cheap, hyper-exploitable labor in the form of dispossessed and unemployed Ghanaian farmers. This “modern form of peonage,” as Washington calls it, depends on the harsh enforcement of the border system for its functioning: Workers from the Global South who migrate to the Global North in search of opportunity, like the Ghanaian tomato farmers, are kept in check by the threat of deportation, “shackled to their work permits, which bosses can use as a form of blackmail.”
Not much new in the Gaza front. So far, Kamala Harris has reiterated her support for America's arming of Israel's genocide. Lots of blah blah blah about Israel's right to defend itself. (Apparently, lots of dead children are necessary to accomplish this "defense".)
I very much want to vote for Harris. But she has not in any way signaled any departure from Biden's policy. Even the murder of an American citizen is deemed as a necessary component of Israel "defending itself". The administration's reaction to this murder is basically, "Oh well, accidents happen."
In my mind, the most important issue of 2024 is the ongoing genocide in Gaza (which is also spilling into the West Bank). On this issue, Biden gets a solid F, and so far Harris shares that F. I am tired of the voter scolds basically telling me that in order to keep Donald Trump out of the White House, it is necessary to support Netanyahu, who is just Israel's version of Donald Trump. The Dems need to do better, If the election was today my vote would go to Cornel West. Harris still has time to change my mind.
Great Substack from Caitlin Johnstone is right on with this opening salvo:
"It clears up a lot of confusion when you understand that the US empire is not a national government which happens to run nonstop military operations, it’s a nonstop military operation that happens to run a national government.
The wars are not designed to serve the interests of the United States, the United States is designed to serve the interests of the wars. The US as a country is just a source of funding, personnel, resources and diplomatic cover for a nonstop campaign to dominate the planet with mass military violence and the threat thereof.
This campaign is not waged to benefit the American people or their security, but to benefit the loose international alliance of plutocrats and unelected empire managers whose wealth and power are premised on the world order of continuous violence, exploitation and extraction which the campaign of global domination upholds. This campaign of global domination and its manifestations as a whole may be referred to as the US empire, which has very little in common with the US as an individual nation."
"...The nonstop violence is a means to a completely different end, and is almost an end in and of itself — benefiting war profiteers, shoring up geostrategic control, and expanding the sphere of the US empire’s particular brand of global capitalism."
It looks like Chuck Schumer is going to join hands with Trump sycophant Mike Johnson to invite Bibi Netanyahu (!!) to speak to a joint session of Congress. Recall that last time Netanyahu came to Congress he insulted our sitting president, with the tacit approval of the Repubs. Indeed, that was probably the exact reason the Repubs wanted him invited. It is no secret that Netanyahu and his extremist government want Donald Trump to be president. The internet is full of Democratic vote shamers telling people that not voting is a vote fror Trump. Now the top Democrat in the Senate seems ready to invite one of Trump's biggest allies to Congress.
This is kind of it for me and the Dems. They lost me. We already knew that the Congressional Republicans work under the direction of AIPAC and the ADL Apparently the Senate Democratic leadership is admitting that they also heed to the same marching orders.
Earlier this week Antony Blinken also committed himself to working with the Republican insurrectionists to "sanction" the ICC for doing its job. Apparently the Biden/Blinken foreign policy team believes that the "rules-based international order" only applies to Russia and countries in Africa.
The dishonesty that the Democrats are willing to employ vis-a-vis Gaza is appalling and causes me to question their character and integrity. They are marching arm-in-arm with Elise Stefanik and Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley and AIPAC (which supports January 6th insurrectionist election deniers with millions of dollars in campaign contributions).
This Adam Johnson piece, as usual, puts into words a lot of how I feel lately. (It's amazing how some people can do that--say things that pretty much sum up what you wish you could express. For me it's Bernie Sanders and Adam Johnson.)
He covers a lot of ground, and uses the Gaza genocide as the backdrop. But it really applies to so much in American life. For me it also brings to mind that old cliche, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Like all cliches, it has come about and endured because it contains at least a kernel of truth and explanation. But at its worst it is just an excuse for perpetuatong the status quo.
Maybe the best example for me is that this sentiment is why America has shit for a healthcare system. "Don't push too hard." "Don't ask for pie-in-the-sky." "Don't drive away moderates." And here we are. The worst healthcare system in the world among developed (and some not-so-developed) nations. Always settling for less.
Some of this is because of the two-pafrty structure in the US. When I was in school in the 1950s and '60s, I was taught that the American political system was superior because we didn't have the instability of the mutiple parties in a lot of other countries. I now believe just the opposite. The stability is good for the capitalist/donor class or whatever you choose to call them. Not so good for the people. Having more than two parties forces the ruling class to be more responsive to those being ruled over.
Maybe it's time to try to change that.
All the vote scolders aside, I am really struggling with my vote in 2024. (Full disclosure: I vote in Illinois and it's pretty certain that Biden wins the state no matter how I vote.) I am fully aware of the dangers of Donald Trump.
But Joe Biden and the Democratic Party are aware of this danger, too. So why is it only up to voters to avoid this danger? Why do Biden and the Dems get off the hook when they pursue terrible policies that alienate millions of their potential voters. So here's the thing. At my age, every presidential vote is potentially my last. I understand all the arguments--after all, I've been endlessly lectured by the centrists for all of my 50+ years of voting--but I find it difficult to vote for a guy whose actions support and fund a genocide.
Beyond that, Biden and his spokespersons have pretty much thrown the campus protesters under the bus, calling them antisemitic and showing no empathy or solidarity. The Dems also threw Rep. Tliab under the bus by voting to censure her. And now a majority of House Democrats voted for a bill that essetially labels criticism of Israel as antisemitism.
As I've said before, the left flank of the party have been reliable coalition partners with President Biden. He needs to be reminded that coalition building should go both ways. Throwing your constitiuents and Congressional partners under the bus is not the way to do it.
I got in a quite mild exchange on social media today where the other guy was espousing the tired old framing of how "the left" won't compromise and only want things to go "their way". I don't see how anyone paying attention during the Biden administration hasn't seen that the left have been Biden's most reliable coalition partners, especially on his domestic agenda. To the extent that Biden has been stymied, it has been by the centrist and conservative Dems.
All of Biden's domestic initiatives would have been a hundred times better except for the obstruction by the right flank of the party. A few excellent nominees for the courts and executive positions were defeated by the likes of Warner, Tester, et al (yeah, you can't blame everything on Manchin and Sinema, the neolib centrists are lined up behind them).
So the long and short of it is that you'd get more stuff and better stuff done if you had more lefties and fewer righties.
I think I depart with even a lot of liberals in that I don't think "woke" is a thing. Just like I never thought "poliitical correctness" was a thing; nor that "cancel culture" was a thing. And I think it's a mistake to take the position that these really were "things", just different "things" than the grievance-soaked right-wingers would have you believe. That angle simply plays into their victimhood. It's all a myth, much like the "liberal media".
To wit: I used to read Ross Douthat (back before I canceled my New York Times subsctiption}. I also heard him a few years ago on the "Know Your Enemy" podcast. I thought, "This is a dying breed, a conservative who actually engages in thoughtful, good-faith discussion and argument." A few years later it seemed like he never writes a column anymore that didn't contain some form of the word "woke". To me it's a red flag of intellectual laziness. I don't read him anymore.
This whole right-wing grievance thing is pretty comical in a black-comedy sort of way. America since the Gaza genocide started is very instructive on this. Musk and Ackman and Trump and the ADL would have you believe that American Unversities are run my a woke mob of communists. What we've seen at Columbia, USC, UCLA, and the rest is that, rather, the typical American university is controlled by the same capitalist oligarchs who control the media, Wall Street, and every other aspect of American life.
Woke? No such thing.
