Random Thoughts and Concerns about The End of The World as We Know It
Part 3
Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.
Lesson Plan
The Third Wave, By Neale Wade, http://thewavehome.com
In 1967, a young, dynamic, and progressive Palo Alto High School Contemporary World History teacher found himself unable to explain to his students how the German population could have claimed ignorance of the Holocaust, so he decided to demonstrate it instead.
As part of the session on Nazi Germany prior to World War II, he created a mock social movement called The Third Wave. It was intended to simulate the experience of how the German population could accept the actions of the Nazi regime.
To demonstrate the appeal of fascism, he started the experiment by telling his students that their new movement aimed to eliminate democracy, which emphasized individuality which was considered a drawback to national success. He underscored his point in the motto: "Strength through discipline, Strength through community, Strength through action, Strength through pride."
During the nineteen-sixties experimentation was the rage. The 1960s counterculture grew from a confluence of ideas (Military draft, Protests of the Vietnam war, Free love, and marches for civil liberties), which served as a catalyst for rapid change.
Over the course of five days, Mr. Jones conducted a series of exercises in his classroom emphasizing discipline and community, intending to model certain characteristics of the Nazi movement. He based the name of his movement, "The Third Wave", on the supposed fact that the third in a series of ocean waves is the strongest.
Day One: Mr. Jones started the experiment with simple things such as proper seating and extensively drilling the students. He then proceeded to enforce strict classroom discipline by emerging as an authoritarian figure and dramatically improving the efficiency of the class.
Students had to be sitting at attention before the second bell, had to stand up to ask or answer questions in three words or fewer, and they were required to preface each remark with "Mr. Jones". This first day's session was intended to be the end of the experiment.
Day Two: Mr. Jones was surprised to discover that his history class wanted to continue the experiment. With their willing cooperation, he managed to meld his class into a group with a supreme sense of discipline and community.
Mr. Jones made up a salute involving a cupped hand reaching across the chest toward the opposite shoulder, resembling a Hitler salute, and ordered class members to salute each other even outside the class. They all enthusiastically complied with his commands.
Those who were committed to the cause would receive an A in the class, those who went along would receive a C in the class, and those who revolted would receive an F in the class: Unless their revolt was successful, in which case they would receive an A in the class.
Those that didn’t comply by the rules, questioned restrictions to free thought, or asked for an explanation, were “disappeared” by banning them to the library. One girl, banned to the library, with the help of her father became a one-person underground resistance movement, secretly making posters that encouraged students to oppose The Third Wave.
Day Three: The experiment was taking on a life of its own, with students from all over the school skipping their own classes to join in: The history class expanded from the initial students to 43 attendees. All the students showed drastic improvement in their academic skills, cooperation, and motivation.
The students were issued a membership card, and each of them received a special assignment, like designing a Third Wave Banner, stopping non-members from entering the class, and three of the students were secretly assigned the task of spying on other members. Mr. Jones instructed the students on how to initiate new members, and by the end of the day the movement had over 200 participants.
As the movement’s membership grew into the hundreds, including students from other classrooms and even from other high schools, Mr. Jones realized that the experiment was moving in an “uncomfortable” direction. He was also shocked by how many of the students were willing to report on other members of the movement who failed to abide by the rules.
Day Four: The students became even more involved in the project and their discipline and loyalty to the project was outstanding. However, Mr. Jones decided to terminate the movement because it was quickly slipping out of his control.
A random add in Time magazine gave him an idea: He closed the doors and drew the drapes, and quietly announced to the participants that the experiment was part of a nationwide movement. The next day a presidential candidate of The Third Wave would publicly announce its existence, and Mr. Jones ordered students to attend a noon rally on Friday to witness the announcement.
Day Five: At the rally, the announcement of a Third Wave presidential candidate was to be televised; but upon their arrival, the students were presented with a blank TV channel: No sound and no picture, just white snow.
After a long wait, with no announcement and no leader, those present in the packed room began to be concerned about the failed announcement, and many of them began to worry about what was really happening. One student clearly remembers alternating between thoughts of discipline and order, and thoughts of gas chambers instead of shower rooms.
As the participants began to panic and head for the exists, Mr. Jones re-appeared and told his students that the true nature of the movement was an experiment in fascism. He announced how disappointed he was that they all willingly accepted a sense of superiority, like German citizens had in the period of Nazi Germany.
Classic Fascism
Donald Trump isn’t a Fascist, By Sheri Berman, http://www.vox.com
Fascism, has never been a fixed creed; it’s a syndrome, a series of intertwined tendencies. Germany, Italy, and Japan were all fascist nations, even though each version was distinct. In each, however, the nation rather than citizens (individuals) or classes (social or economic), was the key actor in political life, and it existed above or separate from the citizens composing it.
In fascism, the nation has ends quite distinct from those of its citizens; a special mission that needs to be nurtured and protected from internal and external enemies. The nation is the culmination, individuals are the means, and its whole life consists in using individuals as instruments for its social ends.
Fascism shares a deep suspicion of capitalism, which disrupts and divides nation communities and destroys the nation’s traditions. Thus liberalism, in which the individual is the end and the nation is the means to accomplish social goals, is rejected for its promotion of individualism and individual rights, its emphasis on reason and rationality, its acceptance of pluralism, and its cosmopolitanism.
Democracy is also anathema because it does not recognize a higher or national good that transcends the interest of individuals, social groups, or electoral majorities. Fascists advocate a mixed economy, with the principal goal of achieving self-sufficiency through protectionist and interventionist economic policies.
They believe that liberal democracy is obsolete, and regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties. Membership in the nation is determined on religious, ethnic, and less so on racial basis.
To maintain a stable and orderly society, Fascists are convinced that “the people” are best off, and politics most efficacious, when led by a strong ruler who forges national unity. As Hitler infamously put it, there must be “One people, one empire, one leader”.
Fascism is revolutionary, aimed not to reform but to destroy, and it embraces violence as a means and an end. It rejects assertions that violence is automatically negative in nature, and views political violence, war, and imperialism to achieve national rejuvenation. Violence is valuable in and of itself, providing bonding experiences and cleansing the nation of its weaknesses and decadence.
Contemporary Fascism
Fourteen Defining Characteristics of Fascism, By Dr. Lawrence Brit, http://www.rense.com
Ever since Sinclair Lewis published his 1935 novel, It Can’t Happen Here, the prospect of an America where democracy is replaced by fascism and authoritarianism has been a standard theme in literature, films, video games, and television shows.
Below is a list of the common characteristics of fascism, found in European history and several Latin American regimes. In America, the expansion of these defining characteristics began long ago, and today we are watching authoritarianism unfold in real time.
Here, in the mirror of world history, is one direction our country might be headed. As you read through this list notice how these characteristics are being reflected in the current news.
Nationalism: Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
Human Rights: Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
Scapegoats: The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
Military: Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
Sexism: The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.
Media: Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
National Security: Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
Religious Interference: Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions.
Corporate Power is Protected: The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
Labor Power is suppressed: Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.
Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts: Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.
Obsession with Crime and Punishment: Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
Rampant Cronyism and Corruption: Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
Fraudulent Elections: Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
Keeping Fascism at bay won’t ever be easy, because in politics as in much of the rest of life nothing lasts forever. For Democracy to thrive and not just survive, democrats, egalitarians, republicans, constitutionalists, and moderates of all parties will need to start doing better.
Friendly Fascism
Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America, By Bertram Gross, 1980
Friendly Fascism doesn’t necessarily require a charismatic dictator, one-party rule, glorification of the State, dissolution of legislatures, termination of multiparty elections, ultra-nationalism, or attacks on rationality. It just requires a powerful oligarchy operating outside of, as well as through, the state.
It will subvert constitutional government, suppress rising demands for wider participation in decision making, and oppose the enforcement and enlargement of human rights as well as genuine democracy.
It will use informational control, ideological flimflam, and Orwellian double speak to get lower and middle-class support for plans to expand the capital and power of the oligarchy, and to provide suitable rewards for political, professional, scientific, and cultural supporters.
It requires an Establishment with lower levels so extensive that few people or groups can attain significant power outside it, and so flexible that many (perhaps most) dissenters and would-be revolutionaries can be incorporated within it. Friendly fascism, in any First World country today, would use sophisticated control technologies far beyond those of the classic fascists.
The emergence of neo-fascism may be blurred by the denunciation of old-style autocracies and military dictatorships as “fascist” in accordance with the colloquial identification of fascism with simple brutality or oppression. In fact, when genuine neo-fascism emerges it may be associated with a relaxation of crude terror as the maturation of more sophisticated, effective, and ruthless controls become dominate.
Under friendly fascism, Big Government would do less pillaging of and more pillaging for Big Business. With more integration than ever before among transnational corporations, Big Business would run less risk of control by any one state and enjoy more subservience by many states.
Big Capital in America has a head start in creating and nurturing an international capitalist Establishment. This possibility is underscored by America’s low-key leadership in articulating the general recognition, by the elites, that there is an emergent crisis of unprecedented proportions that involves the capacity of capitalism to adapt to the future. Big Business in America has vigorously insisted that many world governments are not necessarily capable, on their own, of working out the adaptations necessary to sustain the existing elites in power.
While the term “friendly” is useful in distinguishing between the old-fashioned and the modern forms of repressive Big-Business Big-Government partnerships, the word should not be stretched too far. Don’t underestimate the evils of friendly fascism by overstating the facts and tendencies relating to America’s world orientation, establishment, informational management, rewards and punishments, or modes of system maintenance.
Classic Populism
Donald Trump isn’t a Fascist, By Sheri Berman, http://www.vox.com
Populist movements can be on the right, the left, or in the center. They can be egalitarian or authoritarian, and can rely on decentralized networks or a charismatic leader. They can advocate new social and political relations or romanticize the past.
Populism shares many characteristics with fascists, but their profiles also diverge in critical ways. This divergence reflects the different contexts within which they arise and point to different ways of dealing with them. A crucial difference between populism and fascism is that in the latter, democracy ends through a revolutionary, often violent, conquest of power which historically occurs because democracy itself has essentially ceased to function at all.
Right-wing populist movements are a subset of repressive populist movements. Right-wing populism is considered populism because of its appeal to the "common man" as opposed to the elites. It is a political ideology that rejects the current political consensus and often combines laissez-faire, ethnocentrism and anti-elitism.
Regressive Right-Wing Populism claims to defend “the people” against a threat by crafty elites or sinister subversives. Throughout history, however, right-wing populism has been manipulated by demagogues to attack a demonized scapegoated group. This mobilizes a mass base that merely replaces one faction of the 1% with another.
Today’s right-wing populists have made peace with capitalism. Nevertheless, their movements are repressive, motivated or defined centrally by a backlash against liberation movements, social reform, or revolution. This does not mean that right-wing populism’s goals are only defensive or reactive, but rather that its growth is fueled in a central way by fears of the Left and its political gains.
Contemporary Populism
Donald Trump isn’t a Fascist, By Sheri Berman, http://www.vox.com
Populists claim to want to improve democracy, at least as they define it, to rid it of corruption and inefficiency and make it more responsive to “the people.” For this reason, unlike fascists, they offer no alternative to democracy, other than moving it from its liberal version to a narrow-minded or majoritarian one.
Although there are some similarities between fascism and populism, there are also some crucial differences.
First: While contemporary populists often extol things like “national sovereignty” and the importance of national values and communities, they rarely present the nation as an “organic entity” existing above or beyond the people. The “people” tend to be defined by shared customs, traditions, and behaviors, rather than on purely racial or ethnic grounds. Thus, populists are more xenophobic than racist.
Second: While populists are often critical of free market and globalized capitalism, their disapproval is more muted and selective than that of true fascists and they advocate less state intervention in the economy.
Third: Populists claim to speak in the name of the “the people,” and often demonize those disagreeing with them. They are inherently anti-pluralist; dismissive of the rights of minorities and the legitimacy of alternative viewpoints. Populism is therefore intolerant, but not necessarily anti-democratic.
Fourth: Populists do not openly embrace war or violence as either a means or an end: They neither claim to advocate the sort of revolutionary transformation of politics, economy, and society for which violence would almost certainly be necessary nor do they explicitly encourage their supporters to engage in it.
The ultimate consequence of contemporary populism depends as much on how democratic institutions, parties, and elites respond to contemporary problems. If problems go unaddressed and mainstream parties can’t convince electorates that they, rather than populists, have the best responses to them, then the appeal and radicalism of populism will grow.
Whether populism brings enough democratic erosion to threaten the continued existence of democracy, as it has done for example in places like Turkey and Hungary and is threatening to do in Poland, is thus a very open question in the US and Western Europe.
Keeping Populism at bay won’t ever be easy, because in politics as in much of the rest of life, nothing lasts forever. For Democracy to thrive and not just survive, democrats, egalitarians, republicans, constitutionalists, and moderates of all parties will need to start doing better.
Totalitarian Capitalism
A despot in disguise: One man’s mission to rip up democracy, By George Monbiot, http://www.theguardian.com
To read Nancy MacLean’s book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, is to see what was previously invisible. It’s the missing chapter: A key to understanding the politics of the past half century.
The history professor’s work on the subject began by accident. In 2013, she stumbled across a deserted clapboard house on the campus of George Mason University in Virginia. It was stuffed with the unsorted archives of a man who had died that year, whose name is probably unfamiliar to you: James McGill Buchanan. She says the first thing she picked up was a stack of confidential letters concerning millions of dollars transferred to the university by the billionaire Charles Koch.
Her discoveries in that house of horrors reveal how Buchanan, in collaboration with business tycoons and the institutes they founded, developed a hidden program for suppressing democracy on behalf of the very rich. The program is now reshaping politics, and not just in the US. His vision of totalitarian capitalism, which has infected public policy in the US, and now it’s being exported.
Buchanan was strongly influenced by both the neoliberalism of Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, and the property supremacism of John C Calhoun, who argued in the first half of the 19th century that freedom consists of the absolute right to use your property (including your slaves) however you may wish; any institution that impinges on this right is an agent of oppression, exploiting men of property on behalf of the undeserving masses.
James Buchanan brought these influences together to create what he called public choice theory. He argued that a society could not be considered free unless every citizen has the right to veto its decisions. What he meant by this was that no one should be taxed against their will. He believed the rich were being exploited by people who use their votes to demand money that others have earned, through involuntary taxes to support public spending and welfare. Allowing workers to form trade unions and imposing graduated income taxes were forms of “differential or discriminatory legislation” against the owners of capital.
Any clash between “freedom” (allowing the rich to do as they wish) and democracy should be resolved in favor of freedom. In his book The Limits of Liberty, he noted that “despotism may be the only organizational alternative to the political structure that we observe.” Despotism in defense of freedom.
His prescription was a “constitutional revolution”, creating irrevocable restraints to limit democratic choice. Sponsored throughout his working life by wealthy foundations, billionaires and corporations, he developed a theoretical account of what this constitutional revolution would look like, and a strategy for implementing it.
He explained how attempts to desegregate schooling in the American south could be frustrated by setting up a network of state-sponsored private schools. It was he who first proposed privatizing universities, and imposing full tuition fees on students: his original purpose was to crush student activism. He urged privatization of social security and many other functions of the state. He sought to break the links between people and government, and demolish trust in public institutions. He aimed, in short, to save capitalism from democracy.
In 1980, he was able to put the program into action. He was invited to Chile, where he helped the Pinochet dictatorship write a new constitution, which, partly through the clever devices Buchanan proposed, has proved impossible to reverse entirely. Amid the torture and killings, he advised the government to extend programs of privatization, austerity, monetary restraint, deregulation and the destruction of trade unions: a package that helped trigger economic collapse in 1982.
None of this troubled the Swedish Academy, which through his devotee at Stockholm University Assar Lindbeck in 1986 awarded James Buchanan the Nobel memorial prize for economics. It is one of several decisions that have turned this prize toxic.
Unfettered Capitalism
A despot in disguise: One man’s mission to rip up democracy, By George Monbiot, http://www.theguardian.com
When Koch, currently the seventh richest man in the US, decided that Buchanan held the key to the transformation he sought, his power really began to be felt. Koch saw even such ideologues as Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan as “sellouts”, as they sought to improve the efficiency of government rather than destroy it altogether. But Buchanan took it all the way.
MacLean says that Charles Koch poured millions into Buchanan’s work at George Mason University, whose law and economics departments look as much like corporate-funded thinktanks as they do academic faculties. He employed the economist to select the revolutionary “cadre” that would implement his program (Murray Rothbard, at the Cato Institute that Koch founded, had urged the billionaire to study Lenin’s techniques and apply them to the libertarian cause). Between them, they began to develop a program for changing the rules.
The papers Nancy MacLean discovered show that Buchanan saw stealth as crucial. He told his collaborators that “conspiratorial secrecy is at all times essential”. Instead of revealing their ultimate destination, they would proceed by incremental steps. For example, in seeking to destroy the social security system, they would claim to be saving it, arguing that it would fail without a series of radical “reforms”. (The same argument is used by those attacking the National Health System). Gradually they would build a “counter-intelligentsia”, allied to a “vast network of political power” that would become the new establishment.
Through the network of think-tanks that Koch and other billionaires have sponsored, through their transformation of the Republican party, and the hundreds of millions they have poured into state congressional and judicial races, through the mass colonization of Trump’s administration by members of this network and lethally effective campaigns against everything from public health to action on climate change, it would be fair to say that Buchanan’s vision is maturing in the US.
But not just there. Reading this book felt like a demisting of the window through which I see British politics. The bonfire of regulations highlighted by the Grenfell Tower disaster, the destruction of state architecture through austerity, the budgeting rules, the dismantling of public services, tuition fees and the control of schools: all these measures follow Buchanan’s program to the letter. I wonder how many people are aware that David Cameron’s free schools project stands in a tradition designed to hamper racial desegregation in the American south.
In one respect, Buchanan was right: there is an inherent conflict between what he called “economic freedom” and political liberty. Complete freedom for billionaires means poverty, insecurity, pollution and collapsing public services for everyone else. Because we will not vote for this, it can be delivered only through deception and authoritarian control. The choice we face is between unfettered capitalism and democracy. You cannot have both.
Buchanan’s program is a prescription for totalitarian capitalism. And his disciples have only begun to implement it. But at least, thanks to MacLean’s discoveries, we can now apprehend the agenda. One of the first rules of politics is to know your enemy ... we’re getting there.
Disaster Capitalism
No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning …, By Naomi Klein, www.democracynow.org
Lots of people see our current president as a crisis, but what really has people scared is the configuration of characters in his administration and how they might respond to a large-scale crisis. The chaos is being generated, either deliberately or out of incompetence and avarice, but it’s being used to advance an agenda against the citizens of this country.
What happens if there’s a 2008-like financial crisis, or a Manchester-like incident, or another twin tower attack, in the United States?
The actions of this administration make these types of shocks more likely, not less. They’re deregulating the banks, creating the conditions for another crash. They are antagonizing the world, particularly the Muslim world, which is why ISIS apparently calls Trump’s travel ban a "blessed ban," because it is so good for recruitment. They are making climate disasters more likely with everything they’re doing to deregulate industry, including the deregulation of polluters.
There’s a lag time between that and when the climate shocks hit, but the truth is we’ve already warmed the planet enough that no U.S. president can get through a year, let alone a term, without some sort of major climate-related disaster.
This cabinet of disaster capitalists is taking advantage of crisis. This is how the former Goldman Sachs executives profited from the subprime mortgage crisis, increasing their own personal wealth. Remember Mike Pence and the central role he played, when New Orleans was still underwater, to come up with a corporate wish list to push through.
So, you know, as disastrous as Trump’s policies have been so far, there is a long, toxic to-do list, things that people around this administration have been, and have very openly said they would like to do, but have not been able to do … yet.
Think about Trump’s threats to bring back torture. Think about his threats to bring the feds into Chicago. Think about his threats not just to have a Muslim travel ban from specific countries, but not to let Muslims into the country, period. Think about his goal to strip millions of Americans of health care. Think of his plan to re-open coal mines, employing a few people at the expense of the climate. We need to prepare for this.
The Empire Comes Home
Counterinsurgency, policing, and the Militarization of America’s cities, By Danny Sjursen, www.tomdispatch.com
It’s difficult to call the war on drugs police work. Once you call something a war, pretty soon everybody is running around acting like warriors; on a crusade, storming corners, slapping on handcuffs, and racking up body counts. Pretty soon every person on every corner is your enemy, and the neighborhood you’re supposed to be policing is just occupied territory.
Eventually you end up watching on YouTube as a New York police officer asphyxiated (murdered) Eric Garner for allegedly selling loose cigarettes on a Staten Island street corner. These kinds of events shock the conscience.
Picture a car: When you’re learning to drive, you first sit in the passenger seat and observe. Only then do you occupy the driver’s seat. That was Iraq, as units rotate in and out via an annual revolving door of sorts. Officers from incoming units were forced to learn the terrain, identify the key powerbrokers in an assigned area, and sort out the most effective tactics, in the two weeks before the experienced officers departed. It can be a stressful time.
Those transition weeks consist of daily patrols led by the officers of the departing unit. During a typical night patrol foray off the FOB (forward operating base) the platoon might go to the house of a suspected militia leader. The platoon drives to the outskirts of Baghdad, surrounds a farmhouse, and knocks on the door. When an old woman opens the door a few soldiers quickly fan out to search every room. Only women, presumably the suspect’s mother and sisters, are home.
Through a translator, the lieutenant loudly asks the old woman where her son was hiding. Where could he be found? Had he visited the house recently? Predictably, she claims to be clueless. After the soldiers vigorously search (“toss”) a few rooms and find nothing out of the norm, the lieutenant warns the woman that he’ll be back.
Through a translator, the lieutenant loudly asks the old woman where her son was hiding. Where could he be found? Had he visited the house recently? Predictably, she claims to be clueless. After the soldiers vigorously search (“toss”) a few rooms and find nothing out of the norm, the lieutenant warns the woman that he’ll be back.
It’s easy to understand how you might return to the FOB with an uneasy feeling, not quite understanding what it was that had just been accomplished. How did hassling these women, storming into their home after dark and making threats, contribute to defeating the Mahdi Army or earning the loyalty and trust of Iraqi civilians? The incident can feel totally counterproductive.
Let’s assume the woman’s son was Mahdi Army to the core. So what? Without long-term surveillance or reliable intelligence placing him at the house, entering the premises that way and making threats could only solidify whatever aversion the family already had to the U.S. Army. And what if we had gotten it wrong? What if he was innocent and we’d potentially just helped create a whole new family of insurgents?
These women must feel like many African-American families living under persistent police pressure in parts of New York, Baltimore, Chicago, or elsewhere in this country. Perhaps that sounds outlandish to more affluent whites, but it’s clear enough that some impoverished communities of color in this country do indeed see the police as their enemy. For most military officers, it was similarly unthinkable that many embattled Iraqis could see all American military personnel in a negative light. But just like that raid, you can know one thing for sure: We are going to have to adjust our perceptions, and fast.
Years have passed. Our troops come home. Somehow in those blurred years, Iraq-style police brutality and violence, especially against poor blacks, gradually became front-page news. One shaky YouTube video followed another: Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, and Freddie Gray, just to start a long list. So many of those clips should reminded us of enemy propaganda videos from Baghdad or helmet-cam shots recorded by our troops in combat, except that they come from New York, or Chicago, or San Francisco.
Brutal Connections
Counterinsurgency, policing, and the Militarization of America’s cities, By Danny Sjursen, www.tomdispatch.com
As in Baghdad, so it is in Baltimore. It’s connected. Scholars, pundits, politicians, most of us in fact like our worlds to remain discretely and comfortably separated. That’s why so few articles, reports, or op-ed columns even think to link police violence at home to our imperial pursuits abroad or the militarization of the policing of urban America to our wars across the Greater Middle East and Africa.
How many profiles of the Black Lives Matter movement even mention America’s 16-year war on terror across huge swaths of the planet? Conversely, can you remember a foreign policy piece that cited Ferguson? Take a moment to consider the ways in which counterinsurgency abroad and urban policing at home might, in these years, have come to resemble each other and might be connected phenomena.
The degradations involved: So often, both counterinsurgency and urban policing involve countless routine humiliations of a mostly innocent populace. No matter how we’ve cloaked the terms, “partnering,” “advising,” “assisting,” and so on, the American military has acted like an occupier of Iraq and Afghanistan for many years. In thousands of ubiquitous post-invasions, U.S. Army foot and vehicle patrols in both countries tended to highlight the lack of sovereignty of their peoples.
Similarly, as long ago as 1966, author James Baldwin recognized that New York City’s ghettoes resembled, “occupied territory”. In that regard, matters have only worsened since. Just ask the black community in Baltimore or for that matter Ferguson, Missouri. It’s hard to deny America’s police are becoming progressively more defiant. Since when has it been okay for police to rule America’s streets? Aren’t they there to protect and serve us? Something tells me the exceedingly libertarian Founding Fathers would be appalled by such arrogance.
Racial and ethnic stereotyping: In Baghdad, many U.S. troops called the locals hajis, ragheads, or worse still. The frustrations involved in occupation duty and the fear of death inherent in counterinsurgency campaigns lead soldiers to stereotype, and sometimes even hate, the populations they’re (doctrinally) supposed to protect. Ordinary Iraqis or Afghans became the enemy, the “other,” worthy only of racial pejoratives and (sometimes) petty cruelties. Sound familiar?
Listen to the private conversations of America’s exasperated urban police, or the occasionally public insults they throw at the population they’re paid to “protect.” Remember the video of an infuriated white officer taunting Ferguson protestors: “Bring it on, you f**king animals!” Or how about a white Staten Island cop caught on the phone bragging to his girlfriend about how he’d framed a young black man or, in his words, “fried another nigger.” Dehumanization of the enemy, either at home or abroad, is as old as empire itself.
The searches: Originally in Iraq, soldiers didn’t need a search warrant to look anywhere they pleased. The Iraqi courts, police, and judicial system were barely operational in 2006. Searches of houses, shacks, apartments, and high rises for weapons, explosives, or other contraband was “fair game” No family, guilty or innocent (and most were innocent), was safe from the small, daily indignities of a military search.
Here in the U.S., a similar phenomenon rules, as it has since the “war on drugs” era of the 1980s. It’s now routine for police SWAT teams to execute rubber-stamped or “no knock” search warrants on suspected drug dealers’ homes with an aggressiveness most soldiers from our distant wars would applaud. Then there are the millions of random, warrantless, body searches on America’s urban, often minority-laden streets.
Take New York, for example, where a discriminatory regime of “stop-and-frisk” tactics terrorized blacks and Hispanics for decades. Millions of mostly minority youths were halted and searched by New York police officers who had to cite opaque explanations such as “furtive movements”, or “fits relevant description”; hardly explicit probable cause to execute such daily indignities. As numerous studies have shown (and a judicial ruling found), such “stop-and-frisk” procedures were discriminatory and likely unconstitutional.
As in Iraq, here on the streets of so many urban neighborhoods of color, anyone, guilty or innocent (mainly innocent) was the target of such operations. The connections between war abroad and policing at home runs ever deeper. Consider that in Springfield, Massachusetts, police anti-gang units learned and applied literal military counterinsurgency doctrine on that city’s streets. In post-9/11 New York City, meanwhile, the NYPD Intelligence Unit practiced religious profiling and implemented military-style surveillance to spy on its Muslim residents.
Even America’s stalwart Israeli allies, no strangers to domestic counterinsurgency, have gotten in on the game. That country’s Security Forces have been training American cops, despite their long record of documented human rights abuses. How’s that for coalition warfare and bilateral cooperation?
Tools of the trade
Counterinsurgency, policing, and the Militarization of America’s cities, By Danny Sjursen, www.tomdispatch.com
Who hasn’t noticed in recent years that, thanks in part to a Pentagon program selling weaponry and equipment right off America’s battlefields, the police on our streets look ever less like kindly beat cops and ever more like the heavily armed and protected troops of our distant wars? Think of the sheer firepower and armor on the streets of Ferguson in those photos that shocked and discomforted so many Americans. How about the aftermath of the tragic Boston Marathon Bombing? Watertown, Massachusetts, surely resembled U.S. Army-occupied Baghdad or Kabul at the height of their respective troop “surges,” as the area was locked down under curfew during the search for the bombing suspects.
The connection is undeniable. The military has sold hundreds of millions of dollars in excess weapons and equipment, armored vehicles, rifles, camouflage uniforms, and even drones, to local police departments, resulting in a revolving door of self-perpetuating urban militarism.
Does Walla Walla, Washington, really need the very Mine Resistant Ambush-Protected (MRAP) trucks that drove around Kandahar, Afghanistan? And in case you were worried about the ability of Madison, Indiana (pop: 12,000), to fight off rocket propelled grenades thanks to those spiffy new MRAPs, fear not, Obama-era restrictions on advanced technology transfers to local police were recently overturned.
It should be “obvious to the most causal observer” that it’s a losing proposition to try to be a friendly beat cop and do community policing from inside an armored vehicle. Even soldiers are taught not to perform counterinsurgency that way: Although it’s done that way all the time.
Torture: The use of torture has rarely, except for several years at the CIA, been official policy in these years, but it happened anyway. (See Abu Ghraib, of course.) It often starts small as frustrated soldiers or police inflict minor torments of the locals, which then morph into outright abuse. The same process seems underway here in the U.S. as well.
Younger folks might consider the far more recent case in Baltimore of Freddie Gray, brutally and undeservedly handcuffed, his pleas ignored, and then driven in the back of a police van to his death. Furthermore, we now know about two decades worth of systematic torture of more than 100 black men by the Chicago police, to solicit (often false) confessions.
Unwinnable Wars: For nearly five decades, Americans have been mesmerized by the government’s declarations of “war” on crime, drugs, and, more recently, terror. In the name of these perpetual struggles, apathetic citizens have acquiesced in countless assaults on their liberties. Think warrantless wiretapping, the Patriot Act, and the use of a drone to execute an (admittedly deplorable) American citizen without due process.
None of the onslaughts against the supposedly sacred Bill of Rights have ended terror attacks, prevented a raging opioid epidemic, staunched Chicago’s record murder rate, or thwarted America’s ubiquitous mass shootings, of which the Las Vegas tragedy is only the latest and most horrific example. The wars on drugs, crime, and terror, are all unwinnable and tear at the core of American society. In our apathy, we are all complicit.
Like so much else in our contemporary politics, Americans divide, like clockwork, into opposing camps over police brutality, foreign wars, and America’s original sin: racism. All too often in these debates, arguments aren’t rational but emotional as people feel their way to intractable opinions. It’s become a cultural matter, transcending traditional policy debates. Want to start a sure argument with your dad? Bring up police brutality. I promise you it’s foolproof.
So, here’s a final link between our endless war on terror and rising militarization on what is no longer called “the home front”: There’s a striking overlap between those who instinctively give the increasingly militarized police of that homeland the benefit of the doubt and those who viscerally support our wars across the Greater Middle East and Africa.
It may be something of a cliché that distant wars have a way of coming home, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Policing today is being Baghdadified in the United States. Over the last 40 years, as Washington struggls to maintain its global military influence, the nation’s domestic police have progressively shifted to military-style patrol, search, and surveillance tactics, while measuring success through statistical models familiar to any Pentagon staff officer.
Politics Shouldn’t be Personal
Counterinsurgency, policing, and the Militarization of America’s cities, By Danny Sjursen, www.tomdispatch.com
When it comes to the police, it shouldn’t be personal. Maybe your uncles were New York City cops, or maybe your family has served with the New York Fire Department. Good guys, all. But experience tells us that they aren’t likely to see the connections between what’s happening here and what’s been happening in our distant war zones or agree with these conclusions about them. In a similar fashion, few in the military officer corps are likely to agree, or even recognize, the parallels drawn here.
Of course, these days when you talk about the military and the police, you’re often talking about the very same people, since veterans from our wars are now making their way into police forces across the country, especially the highly militarized SWAT teams proliferating nationwide that use the sorts of smash-and-search tactics perfected abroad in recent years. While less than 6% of Americans are vets, some 19% of law-enforcement personnel have served in the U.S. military. In many ways it’s a natural fit, as former soldiers seamlessly slide into police life and pick up the very weaponry they once used in Afghanistan, Iraq, or elsewhere.
The widespread perpetuation of uneven policing and criminal in-justice can be empirically shown. Consider the numerous critical Justice Department investigations of major American cities. But what should concern us most is a simple question: What happens to the republic when the militarism that is part and parcel of our now more or less permanent state of war abroad takes over ever more of the prevailing culture of policing at home?
The inconvenient truth: Despite numerous instances of brutality and murder perpetrated by the U.S. military personnel overseas, think Haditha (the infamous retaliatory massacre of Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines), Panjwai (where a U.S. Army Sergeant left his base and methodically executed nearby Afghan villagers), and of course Abu Ghraib, our army is often stricter about interactions with foreign civilians than many local American police forces are when it comes to communities of color. After all, if someone strangled an Iraqi to death for breaking a minor civil law (as happened to Eric Garner), you can bet that the soldier, his sergeant, and the officer in charge, would have been disciplined; even if, as is so often the case, such accountability never reached the senior-officer level.
The irony is this: Eric Garner, would have been safer in Baghdad than on that street corner in New York. Either way, he and so many others should perhaps be counted as domestic casualties of this generation’s forever war.
What is global is local. And vice versa. American society is embracing its inner empire. Eventually, its long reach may come for us all.
Democracy Lost
20 of America's top political scientists … They're scared, By Sean Illing, www.vox.com
Is American democracy in decline? Should we be worried? Recently, some of America’s top political scientists gathered to answer these questions, and nearly everyone agreed: American democracy is eroding on multiple fronts; socially, culturally, and economically.
The scholars pointed to breakdowns in social cohesion, the rise of tribalism, the erosion of democratic norms such as a commitment to rule of law, and a loss of faith in the electoral and economic systems as clear signs of democratic erosion.
No one believed the end is nigh, or that it’s too late to solve America’s many problems. Scholars said that America’s institutions are where democracy has proven most resilient. So far at least, our system of checks and balances is working; the courts are checking the executive branch, the press remains (mostly) free and vibrant, and Congress is (mostly) fulfilling its role as an equal branch.
But there was a sense that the alarm bells are ringing. Yascha Mounk, a lecturer in government at Harvard University, summed it up well: “If current trends continue for another 20 or 30 years, democracy will be toast.”
Nancy Bermeo, a politics professor at Princeton and Harvard, began her talk with a jarring reminder: Democracies don’t merely collapse, as that “implies a process devoid of will.” Democracies die because of deliberate decisions made by human beings. In other words, “Democracies don’t fall apart, they’re taken apart”
Usually, it’s because the people in power take democratic institutions for granted. They become disconnected from the citizenry. They develop interests separate and apart from the voters. They push policies that benefit themselves and harm the broader population. Do that long enough, Bermeo says, and you’ll cultivate an angry, divided society that pulls apart at the seams.
Adam Przeworski, a democratic theorist at New York University, suggested that democratic erosion in America begins with a breakdown in what he calls the “class compromise”: Democracies thrive so long as people believe they can improve their lot in life. This basic belief has been an essential ingredient of Western civilization during the past 200 years.
But fewer and fewer Americans believe this is true. Due to wage stagnation, growing inequalities, automation, and a shrinking labor market, millions of Americans are deeply pessimistic about the future: 64 percent of people in Europe believe their children will be worse off than they were; 60 percent of people in America agree.
That pessimism is grounded in economic reality. In 1970, 90 percent of 30-year-olds in America were better off than their parents at the same age. In 2010, only 50 percent were. Numbers like this cause people to lose faith in the system. What you get is a spike in extremism and a retreat from the political center. That leads to declines in voter turnout and, consequently, more opportunities for fringe parties and candidates.
Political polarization is an obvious problem, but researchers suggest something more profound is going on. Political theorists like to talk about the “social compact,” which is basically an implicit agreement among members of society to participate in a system that benefits everyone.
Naturally, that only works if the system actually delivers on its promises. If it fails to do so, it leads people to conclude that the alternative is less scary than the status quo; and that leads the system to implode from within. While that it is not happening here yet, we know there’s a growing disconnect between productivity (how hard people work) and compensation (how much they’re paid for that work).
Przeworski believes that American democracy isn’t collapsing so much as deteriorating. He argues that our divisions are not merely political but have deep roots in society. The system has become too rigged and too unfair, and most people have no real faith in it.
Where does that leave us? Nowhere good. The best we can hope for is that our current crisis will continue for the foreseeable future.
Democratic Norms
20 of America's top political scientists … They're scared, By Sean Illing, www.vox.com
The soft guardrails of democracy are eroding: We’ve heard a lot of chatter recently about the importance of democratic norms. These are the unwritten rules and the conventions that undergird a democracy, things like commitment to rule of law, to a free press, to the separation of powers, to the basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion, and property.
Daniel Ziblatt, a politics professor at Harvard, calls these norms “the soft guardrails of democracy.” Dying democracies, he argues, are always preceded by the breaking of these unwritten rules.
Research conducted by Bright Line Watch, shows that Americans are not as committed to these norms as you might expect. It’s not that Americans don’t believe in democratic ideals or principles; it’s that our beliefs scale with our partisan loyalties. People’s opinions on democracy lie downstream from their partisan identity.
Another startling finding is that many Americans are open to “alternatives” to democracy. In 1995, for example, one in 16 Americans supported Army rule; in 2014, that number increased to one in six. According to another survey cited at the conference, 18 percent of Americans think a military-led government is a “fairly good” idea.
Ziblatt identified what he calls two “master norms.” The first is mutual toleration, whether we “accept the basic legitimacy of our opponents.” The second is institutional forbearance, whether politicians responsibly wield the power of the institutions they’re elected to control.
As for mutual toleration, America is failing abysmally, and institutional forbearance isn’t much better.
Most obviously, our current President has dispensed with one democratic norm after another. He’s fired an FBI director to undercut an investigation into his campaign’s possible collusion with Moscow; staffed his White House with family members; regularly attacked the free press; and refused to divest himself of his business interests.
The Republican Party, with few exceptions, has tolerated these violations in the hope that they might advance their agenda. But it’s about a lot more than Republicans capitulating to Trump.
Ziblatt points to the GOP’s unprecedented blocking of President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, in 2016 as an example of institutional recklessness. In 2013, Senate Democrats took a similarly dramatic step by eliminating filibusters for most presidential nominations. That same year, House Republicans endangered the nation’s credit rating and shut down the government over Obamacare.
There are countless other encroachments one could cite, but the point is clear enough: American democracy is increasingly less anchored by norms and traditions — and history suggests that’s a sign of democratic decay.
“We don’t trust each other”
Timur Kuran, a professor of economics and politics at Duke University, argued that the real danger we face isn’t that we no longer trust the government but that we no longer trust each other.
Kuran calls it the problem of “intolerant communities,” and he says there are two such communities in America today: “identitarian” activists concerned with issues like racial/gender equality, and the “nativist” coalition, people suspicious of immigration and cultural change.
Each of these communities defines itself in terms of its opposition to the other. They live in different worlds, desire different things, and share almost nothing in common. There is no real basis for agreement and thus no reason to communicate.
The practical consequence of this is a politics marred by tribalism. Worse, because the fault lines run so deep, every political contest becomes an intractable existential drama, with each side convinced the other is not just wrong but a mortal enemy.
Consider this: In 1960, 5 percent of Republicans and 4 percent of Democrats objected to the idea of their children marrying across political lines. In 2010, those numbers jumped to 46 percent and 33 percent respectively. Divides like this are eating away at the American social fabric.
A 2014 Pew Research Center study reached a similar conclusion: "In both political parties, most of those who view the other party very unfavorably say that the other side's policies 'are so misguided that they threaten the nation's well-being,'" Pew reports. "Overall, 36% of Republicans and those who lean Republican say Democratic policies threaten the nation, while 27% of Democrats and those who lean Democratic view GOP policies in equally stark terms."
So, it’s not merely that we disagree about issues; it’s that we believe the other side is a grievous threat to the republic. According to Pew, the numbers above have more than doubled since 1994.
Kuran warns that autocrats tend to exploit these divisions by pushing “policies that may seem responsive to grievances but are ultimately counterproductive.” Think of Donald Trump’s “Muslim ban” or his insistence on building a giant wall on the southern border. Neither of these policies is likely to make a significant difference in the lives of Trump’s voters, but that’s not really the point.
By pandering to fears and resentments, Trump both deepens the prejudices and satisfies his base.
The politics of eternity: Timothy Snyder, a Yale historian and author of the book On Tyranny, gave one of the more fascinating talks of the conference.
Strangely enough, Snyder talked about time as a kind of political construct. (I know that sounds weird, but bear with me.) His thesis was that you can tell a lot about the health of a democracy based on how its leaders — and citizens — orient themselves in time.
Take Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan. The slogan itself invokes a nostalgia for a bygone era that Trump voters believe was better than today and better than their imagined future. By speaking in this way, Snyder says, Trump is rejecting conventional politics in a subtle but significant way.
Why, after all, do we strive for better policies today? Presumably it’s so that our lives can be improved tomorrow. But Trump reverses this. He anchors his discourse to a mythological past, so that voters are thinking less about the future and more about what they think they lost.
“Trump isn’t after success, he’s after failure,” Snyder argued. By that, he means that Trump isn’t after what we’d typically consider success, passing good legislation that improves the lives of voters. Instead, Trump has defined the problems in such a way that they can’t be solved. We can’t be young again. We can’t go backward in time. We can’t relive some lost golden age. So, these voters are condemned to perpetual disappointment.
The counterargument is that Trump’s idealization of the past is, in its own way, an expression of a desire for a better future. If you’re a Trump voter, restoring some lost version of America or revamping trade policies or rebuilding the military is a way to create a better tomorrow based on a model from the past.
For Snyder, though, that’s not really the point. The point is that Trump’s nostalgia is a tactic designed to distract voters from the absence of serious solutions. Trump may not be an authoritarian, Snyder warns, but this is something authoritarians typically do. They need the public to be angry, resentful, and focused on problems that can’t be remedied.
Snyder calls this approach “the politics of eternity,” and he believes it’s a common sign of democratic backsliding because it tends to work only after society has fallen into disorder.
A depressing takeaway: Back in June 2017, I interviewed political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels, authors of Democracy for Realists. They had a sobering thesis about democracy in America: Most people pay little attention to politics; when they vote, if they vote at all, they do so irrationally and for contradictory reasons.
One of the recurring themes of this conference was that Americans are becoming less committed to liberal democratic norms. But were they ever really committed to those norms? I’m not so sure. If Achen and Bartels are to be believed, most voters don’t hold fixed principles. They have vague feelings about undefined issues, and they surrender their votes on mostly tribal grounds.
So, I look at the declining faith in democratic norms and think: Most people probably never cared about abstract principles like freedom of the press or the rule of law. (We stopped teaching civics to our children long ago.) But they more or less affirmed those principles as long as they felt invested in American life.
But for all the reasons discussed above, people have gradually disengaged from the status quo. Something has cracked. Citizens have lost faith in the system. The social compact is broken. So now we’re left to stew in our racial and cultural resentments, which paved the way for a demagogue like Trump.
The bottom line: I was already pretty cynical about the trajectory of American democracy when I arrived at the conference, and I left feeling justified in that cynicism. Our problems are deep and broad and stretch back decades, and the people who study democracy closest can only tell us what’s wrong. They can’t tell us what ought to be done.
No one can, it seems.
Shock Politics
No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning …, By Naomi Klein, www.democracynow.org
While traveling to cover world governments in transition, the author has spent a lot of time thinking about shock politics. She has noticed a brutal and recurring tactic by right-wing governments. After a shocking event, which can occur in almost any form, a war, a coup, a terrorist attack, market crash, or natural disaster, the elite exploit the public’s disorientation, suspend democracy, and push through radical policies that enrich the one percent at the expense of the poor and middle class.
Lately, she has been focused on President Trump and what she sees happening in America. Trump promised to “repeal and replace Obamacare”, “cut taxes and simplify the tax code”, and “withdraw from the Paris climate accord”. Many people approve of what Trump has been trying to do, but in all likelihood, the worst is yet to come, and we better be ready. This administration is creating chaos, daily.
Of course, many of the scandals are the result of the current president’s ignorance and blunders, not some nefarious strategy. But there’s also no doubt that some savvy people around Trump are using the daily shocks as cover to advance wildly pro-corporate policies that bear little resemblance to what Trump pledged on the campaign trail.
Trump declared that he would “save Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security”, and yet the proposed 2018 budget, released by the White House, slashes billions of dollars from both Medicaid and Social Security.
So, what sort of event might trigger a large-scale crisis? We already know from the way Trump responded to the London Bridge attacks, he immediately said, "This is why we need to bring back my travel ban." After the Manchester attacks, he immediately said, "This is about immigrants flooding across our borders", even though the person responsible for those attacks was born in the U.K.
In shock politics, reality doesn’t matter, and the truth isn’t relevant. We know from 9/11, that these crises are used as opportunities to push through policies that have very little to do with getting at root causes, and, in many cases exacerbate problems such as the invasion of Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11.
This, or any administration, could declare a state of emergency, or some sort of state exception where they’re able to ban protests, like the very inspiring protests we saw in the face of the Muslim travel ban. They would say, "No, you can’t block a road. You can’t block an airport”. Falsely suggesting that you could be a target of terrorism yourself. “Stay in your homes."
That is the moment to resist.
Like Argentina in 2001, when, as the president was declaring a state of siege and telling people to stay in their homes, people described not being able to hear him because the sound from the streets was so loud, the roar of pots and pans, and neighbors flooding out of their homes and going to the Plaza de Mayo and refusing this state of siege. They literally couldn’t hear him.
This was the moment at which no one was willing to accept it. So, other people left their houses, and it’s really a question of strength in numbers. It’s easy to crush small protests when it’s only a small number of hardcore activists that are out on the streets. It’s harder to do it when it is hundreds of thousands of people. When societies stand up and chant, "We will not let you do it."
In France, a week before the Paris climate summit, 200 people were killed in Paris in coordinated attacks. The French government, under François Hollande, a Socialist government, Socialist in name only, but, you know, a left government, declared a state of emergency and banned political gatherings of more than five people. If that can happen in France under a Socialist government, in a country with a very deep history of disruptive strikes, what do we expect Trump and Bannon and Pence to do at the earliest opportunity?
It’s important to strategize.
In Argentina, why did they flood out of their houses? The people said, "It reminded us of the beginning of the dictatorship in 1976. That’s how it started. They told us that we weren’t safe and that it was going to be a temporary state of emergency. And it ended up turning into a dictatorship." They saw the early signs, and they said, "No, not again. Nunca más."
It’s important to know the history in the United States. When we talked to Americans about this, they said, "Well, we don’t have that history." What about the Japanese internment? What about what happened to Mexican Americans during the Great Depression, and today during the crisis of the mass deportations? We do have that history. This history exists in many communities, and those communities keep that history alive.
During Hurricane Katrina, African Americans talked about the history of how crises have been used to further oppress black people in this country. These stories remain isolated to these communities, who hold them and keep them alive, but this is a problem because they aren’t nationally metabolized. These stories must be shared, like the memory of what happened after September 11th. Not sharing stories is how citizen’s rights are lost and how people’s grief is exploited by men in power, who say, "Trust me".
Don’t make that mistake again.
What about the connection to war? The connection in Manchester and the horror there. The continued deaths in Yemen, and the U.S. backed Saudi bombing. Now the U.S. has expanded its forces in both Somalia and in the Philippines.
You have the horrific attack that took place in Kabul, where over 150 Afghans died, and yet it hardly got any attention. The rage that must be brewing at the grassroots, when they don’t get any media attention from the West, must be overwhelming.
People are being erased, and this is a very, very old story. Leaders are expanding the battlefields and escalating on multiple fronts. This is the most dangerous, most lethal way that shocking events are exploited, by exploiting people’s fear.
Remember, any administration will have various motivations for changing the subject away from their domestic scandals. Trump has never gotten better media coverage than in the wake of his Syrian missile strike. Suddenly, he was presidential, ordering cruise missiles over chocolate cake at Mar-a-Lago.
We must be very vigilant about this.
The U.S. has had a strong antiwar movement in the past, but today that antiwar movement is no longer in the streets in the same way. Resistance movements are going to have to get ready for the next shock, because once the wars begin, it’s very hard to stop them.
Our current president sealed deals, worth well over $110 billion, and leaves Saudi Arabia extolling their leadership and then he attacks the European leaders. He returns to the United States and announces he’s withdrawing from the very accord the European leaders are pleading with him to remain in. What about the primacy of Saudi Arabia right now, both its connection to war, with the U.S. backed Saudi bombing of Yemen which is, in turn, leading to a horrific cholera epidemic, and climate change?
One of the things that should really worry all of us is how motivated the petrol-states are to have more instability, because that sends the price of oil up, which improves their profit flow even more. It’s something that the Saudis have in common with the Russians, and Petrol companies in the US.
One way of seeing Trump’s foreign trip is basically as a traveling weapons salesman. He’s sending a clear message: If you buy enough American weapons, you’re our friend. He heaps praise on Saudi Arabia for having done that, and he screams at Europe, NATO members, for not pulling their weight: Which means not buying enough weapons. Trump’s foreign policy, is traveling weapons salesman.
Resisting Shock Politics
No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning …, By Naomi Klein, www.democracynow.org
This, or any administration, could declare a state of emergency, or some sort of state exception where they’re able to ban protests, like the very inspiring protests we saw in the face of the Muslim travel ban. They would say, "No, you can’t block a road. You can’t block an airport”. Falsely suggesting that you could be a target of terrorism yourself. “Stay in your homes."
That is the moment to resist.
Like Argentina in 2001, when, as the president was declaring a state of siege and telling people to stay in their homes, people described not being able to hear him because the sound from the streets was so loud, the roar of pots and pans, and neighbors flooding out of their homes and going to the Plaza de Mayo and refusing this state of siege. They literally couldn’t hear him.
This was the moment at which no one was willing to accept it. So, other people left their houses, and it’s really a question of strength in numbers. It’s easy to crush small protests when it’s only a small number of hardcore activists that are out on the streets. It’s harder to do it when it is hundreds of thousands of people. When societies stand up and chant, "We will not let you do it."
In France, a week before the Paris climate summit, 200 people were killed in Paris in coordinated attacks. The French government, under François Hollande, a Socialist government, Socialist in name only, but, you know, a left government, declared a state of emergency and banned political gatherings of more than five people. If that can happen in France under a Socialist government, in a country with a very deep history of disruptive strikes, what do we expect Trump and Bannon and Pence to do at the earliest opportunity?
It’s important to strategize.
In Argentina, why did they flood out of their houses? The people said, "It reminded us of the beginning of the dictatorship in 1976. That’s how it started. They told us that we weren’t safe and that it was going to be a temporary state of emergency. And it ended up turning into a dictatorship." They saw the early signs, and they said, "No, not again. Nunca más."
It’s important to know the history in the United States. When we talked to Americans about this, they said, "Well, we don’t have that history." What about the Japanese internment? What about what happened to Mexican Americans during the Great Depression, and today during the crisis of the mass deportations? We do have that history. This history exists in many communities, and those communities keep that history alive.
During Hurricane Katrina, African Americans talked about the history of how crises have been used to further oppress black people in this country. These stories remain isolated to these communities, who hold them and keep them alive, but this is a problem because they aren’t nationally metabolized. These stories must be shared, like the memory of what happened after September 11th. Not sharing stories is how citizen’s rights are lost and how people’s grief is exploited by men in power, who say, "Trust me".
Don’t make that mistake again.
What about the connection to war? The connection in Manchester and the horror there. The continued deaths in Yemen, and the U.S. backed Saudi bombing. Now the U.S. has expanded its forces in both Somalia and in the Philippines.
You have the horrific attack that took place in Kabul, where over 150 Afghans died, and yet it hardly got any attention. The rage that must be brewing at the grassroots, when they don’t get any media attention from the West, must be overwhelming.
People are being erased, and this is a very, very old story. Leaders are expanding the battlefields and escalating on multiple fronts. This is the most dangerous, most lethal way that shocking events are exploited, by exploiting people’s fear.
Remember, any administration will have various motivations for changing the subject away from their domestic scandals. Trump has never gotten better media coverage than in the wake of his Syrian missile strike. Suddenly, he was presidential, ordering cruise missiles over chocolate cake at Mar-a-Lago.
We must be very vigilant about this.
The U.S. has had a strong antiwar movement in the past, but today that antiwar movement is no longer in the streets in the same way. Resistance movements are going to have to get ready for the next shock, because once the wars begin, it’s very hard to stop them.
Our current president sealed deals, worth well over $110 billion, and leaves Saudi Arabia extolling their leadership and then he attacks the European leaders. He returns to the United States and announces he’s withdrawing from the very accord the European leaders are pleading with him to remain in. What about the primacy of Saudi Arabia right now, both its connection to war, with the U.S. backed Saudi bombing of Yemen which is, in turn, leading to a horrific cholera epidemic, and climate change?
One of the things that should really worry all of us is how motivated the petrol-states are to have more instability, because that sends the price of oil up, which improves their profit flow even more. It’s something that the Saudis have in common with the Russians, and Petrol companies in the US.
One way of seeing Trump’s foreign trip is basically as a traveling weapons salesman. He’s sending a clear message: If you buy enough American weapons, you’re our friend. He heaps praise on Saudi Arabia for having done that, and he screams at Europe, NATO members, for not pulling their weight: Which means not buying enough weapons. Trump’s foreign policy, is traveling weapons salesman.
Democracy in Action
Jetpac aims to boost Muslim participation in American politics, By Scott Malone, http://www.reuters.com
A newly formed U.S. political advocacy group is launching a campaign aimed at inspiring more Muslim Americans to run for office, in what it describes as a long-term effort to give Muslims more of a voice in a hostile political climate. The group is called Jetpac, which stands for Justice, Education, Technology, Policy Advocacy Center.
This campaign comes at a tense time for Muslims, less than a week after an executive order issued temporary travel restrictions effecting seven Muslim-majority countries. The stated purpose of the order is "to head off potential terrorist attacks", but it's become a political wake-up call inspiring a cry to form an American Muslim leadership base.
One of the first actions of the newly formed Muslim political organization is to encourage political activism among the 3.3 million Muslims who make up about 1 percent of the U.S. population. The group's founder says, "This is the time when Muslims should step forward".
Jetpac's immediate goal is not electing more Muslims to federal office, it is hoping to inspire and train more Muslims who are not currently politically active to run for lower-level offices, such as city council or school board positions: Like mothers who want to run for the school committee, people who are already involved in nonprofit work or issue-based campaigns, and others already involved in their community.
While the group acknowledges that it will take time for political newcomers to win elections, even the act of campaigning could help Muslims, simply by making people more familiar with politics. It allows them to meet lots of people, including those that they might not otherwise meet which has the effect of reducing prejudice.
Although U.S. Muslim leaders have routinely denounced violence as a violation of Islamic teaching, about 49 percent of respondents to a Pew survey last year said they considered at least some Muslims to be anti-American. With the memories of violent attacks, including the destruction of the World Trade Center, the Boston Marathon bombing, and other violent acts carried out by men and women who spouted radical Islamist views, many Americans take a dim view of Muslims. However, almost half of respondents to a 2016 Pew Research Center poll who knew a Muslim personally were less likely to believe that than ones who did not.
We should all be reminded that many generations of immigrant populations in the U.S. have gone through the same process of becoming politically active. To be effective politically you must know what you're doing, and using a model like many parochial schools in the northeastern United States, Jetpac’s students study both standard U.S. academic subjects as well as Arabic and the Koran.
Reaction
Trump’s Counter Jihad, How the anti-Muslim fringe conquered …, By Zack Beauchamp, http://www.vox.com
One of the things we all learned in high school physics was, “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”, and it probably applies in politics too. It doesn’t matter whether the American population is majority Christian or majority “other”, democracy will always be messy.
There is, in fact, a growing movement that exists just out of sight of most Americans pushing the notion that there is a creeping, quiet plot to take over America from within. This “counter-jihadist” movement, with their clashist version of history, argues that political leaders from both parties have spent years covering up the true threat to the United States. They claim that, "It doesn’t come from terrorists acting in the name of Islam, it comes from Islam itself".
Many people within the United States believe that Sharia is a brutally repressive, totalitarian, politically motivated, militaristic, and legal program for gradually subverting governments, replacing them with ones that adhere to harsh Islamic dictates. These same people fear that this program of subversive, stealthy penetration and takedown is operating within our borders: While it’s not easy to see in the US, there is ample evidence of this effect in other parts of the world.
This “counter-jihadist” movement also suggests that to be safe from the threat, we need to slash Muslim immigration, arrest key leaders of the Muslim American community, and shut down huge numbers of mosques. Does this help you better understand recent news?
Of course, the notion of senior US officials intentionally weakening American national security or appointing advisers who were literal members of a Middle Eastern Islamist movement is preposterous. Nevertheless, while I can’t in good conscience accept a solution that tolerates the harsh treatment of anyone acting in support of their faith, I must agree that I am concerned about the notion of a peaceful takeover.
Nevertheless, while I would like to insist that to Be American one should Act American, true democracy may not support my position. The scapegoating of Muslim communities in Europe and America is the road to pogroms, and it is that road that we are starting down, even if we can still turn back.
Backlash
Trump’s Dangerous Delusions about Islam, By Chrisopher de Bellaigue, http://www.theguardian.com
The recent executive “Muslim ban”, of course, is less about terrorism and immigration than it is about race and religion. Many presidents before now have hurt and targeted immigrants unjustly, and in truth, all administrations have targeted immigrants in one form or another.
While we claim to be a nation of immigrants, Americans, depending on their skin tone, national origin and religion, have either been welcomed or have had to fight to prove they belonged. From the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the 1941 internment of Japanese-Americans, and the 2002 Special Registration program aimed at Arab and Muslim men, the U.S. has struggled to live up to its stated ideals of welcoming the world’s “huddled masses.”
Today, we have an administration whose actions are fomenting a serious backlash. The airport protests pushing hard against the “Muslim ban” are a testament to the fact that this President may be biting off more than he can chew. In our globalized world, where peer-to-peer contact is easy and instant, we are more capable than ever of being sensitive to the plight of non-citizens.
I’ve already stated that I’m worried about the future of this country, but I want to make it clear that I do not in any way accept discrimination, nor the vengeful retributions of the clash-mongers: such as electronic tagging, deportations, or orders to shoot illicit refuges.
I’ve also mentioned before that I think our country is in trouble and our way of life is going to change; because I believe that “You can’t stop change, you can only delay it”. The question is … what is going to change, how is it going to arise, and who’s going to initiate that change?
The expressions of solidarity by ordinary people toward immigrants in recent days should make us all proud to be American. Maybe someday, we will truly proclaim that America is a nation of immigrants; and ensure that those who are subject to the most extreme vetting are our politicians.
Interdependence
Cultural Homelessness, By Alana Conner, http://www.defenseone.com
News Flash: An immigration ban will not keep the terrorists out. The terrorists are already here!
Islamic terrorism and domestic mass shootings are caused by the exact same psychological phenomenon. In the years since 9/11, jihadists born in the US have killed 69 victims, right-wing extremists born in the US have killed 50 victims, and foreign-born jihadists have killed 25 victims.
These numbers offer evidence that an immigration ban will not stop the murder of Americans. But they also point out a larger flaw in the way we talk about domestic terrorism in the US. Research suggests that the same underlying factors cause homegrown Americans to break bad, whether they join an Islamic terrorist group or the Ku Klux Klan.
Muslims in the US radicalize when they believe their lives do not matter, a belief that arises from the feeling that they don’t really belong anywhere. Radical Islamist groups exploit these emotions, and thus, radical Islamic terrorism is not primarily a religious problem, it is a social problem.
Similar psychological processes may drive white Americans to join white supremacist and other right-wing militant groups. Right-wing terrorist groups offer people who feel isolated and disempowered a chance to feel important and welcome.
It’s a different culture war but the same psychological phenomenon. If the grand US experiment in multicultural democracy is ever going to work, we must learn how to respectfully engage with people different from ourselves.
Interdependence, rather than independence, builds stronger bridges between people from different backgrounds. Each of us has an interdependent side, which listens, relates, and seeks similarity, and an independent side, which asserts, individuates, and seeks differences.
One way to forge interdependence is to listen. We must learn to approach conversations as occasions to connect with people different from ourselves, rather than as opportunities to change their hearts and minds. Asking meaningful questions, and listening to the answers, builds closeness between people. Giving people a chance to share their viewpoints first makes them more open to hearing yours later.
All humans tend toward tribalism, but the violence committed by terrorists and mass murderers is a reminder of how dangerous tribalism can be. We must use our interdependent side to listen, relate to, and build common ground with one another, not only to expand our sense of community, but to keep the US from sliding irrevocably backwards.
Thus, vast populations are subject to conditions that confer upon them the status of the living dead. Under the auspices of life-threatening austerity policies, not only are public goods defunded and the commons devalued, but the very notion of what it means to be a citizen is manipulated and redefined in terms of consumerism. At the same time, politics is hijacked by corporate power and the ultra-rich, making it “unappealing and toxic” (full of ranting and posturing, emptied of intellectual seriousness, and pandering to an uneducated and impressionable electorate and a celebrity-and-scandal-hungry corporate media).
Perceived Reality
Perceived Reality, By Neale Wade, http://confessionsofaliberalgunowner.blogspot.com
What we’ve been working with over the last few years is a “rush ahead” party and an “undo the system” party. It’s very hard to imagine change as positive, because one party is in favor of enforcing their great ideas, to make things better or just slightly better, and the other party is in favor of undoing everything, enforcing a return to the past and a time thought to be better.
The narrow minded, progressive, Democratic party is unsustainable. It’s focus on fairness and large government goals, while praiseworthy, include unbearable taxation. Characterized by wealth redistribution and a centralized domineering control of its citizens, it is designed to enrich the elite classes at the expense of the working classes.
The closed minded, conservative, Republican party lacks empathy. It’s focus on the Constitution and small government goals, while attractive, include unacceptable inequality. Characterized by wealth stratification and a distributed authoritative control of its citizens, it is designed to enrich the elite classes at the expense of the poor classes.
The open minded, non-interventionist, Libertarian party is disengaged. It’s focus on liberty and nominal government goals, while tempting, include an undesirable level of chaos. Characterized by wealth independence and a lack of sensible control of its citizens, it is designed to enrich the elite classes at the expense of everyone.
Each of the above represent tax and spend agendas, with differences only in who is taxed and who benefits. It doesn’t matter what you believe or who you voted for or why. Whether you’re conservative, progressive, or centrist, right, left, or middle, republican, democrat, or independent, any administration (past, present, and future) has no interest in making your life more tolerable.
Which brings me to my point: Although this binder has at times focused on the current administration, I believe that there is a deeper problem with our government. I do not believe that who is in power matters, or that the problems in America are a left vs right issue.
The fact that our nation’s leaders routinely exempt themselves from the laws that they pass for the “benefit of the people” should be a giant red flag for all of us. At the same time, no one is articulating how to address real problems: The greatest of which is inequality (us vs them, my tribe vs your tribe, my rights vs your rights).
As depicted in the imaginary world of the Matrix, I do not believe that the leadership in this country is concerned with the needs of the people, I don’t believe that they are listening to the person on the street, and I don’t believe that they identify with citizens. They are working to make their collective lives better at the expense of everyday citizens.
With very few exceptions, the leadership of this country is interested in promoting their own agendas: Limiting health care while exempting themselves of its negative effects, controlling voter rights to enhance their positions of power, and endorsing corporations to extract profits and augment their own wealth. This is a much longer list …
To get past this, you and I and everyone else must stop defending our side of the argument, and realize that it’s an argument meant to keep us distracted. Elites within all the major political parties are leading this country down the wrong path, and none of them have our interests in mind. Those in power are using chaos to slowly convince the public that their changes are necessary for the “common good”.
No comments:
Post a Comment