Category Archives: Political Rants

Political Rants

Fear and favor.

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The Trump Administration almost gleefully declared Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization this week, setting a new precedent in this overtly imperial practice of terror designation by applying it to a branch of the armed forces of a sovereign nation. The first question that came to my mind was, did Trump do this at this particular moment as a last-minute favor to Netanyahu or as a sop to his buddy Mohammed bin Salman? Only Trump’s hairdresser knows for sure.

Not that the president’s penchant for prioritizing his personal interests is the sole motivation here. As the execrable Pompeo said, this is part of their strategy of placing “maximum pressure” on Iran, another step toward making military conflict with the Islamic Republic all but inevitable. Trita Parsi pointed out on Democracy Now! that one of the most serious effects of this decision would be to forestall any future opportunity to reduce the level of confrontation with Iran by effectively criminalizing any contact with large swaths of the Iranian government or civil society. It will also make reconciliation far more politically costly for future, hopefully more sane American leaders, while strengthening the hardliners in Iran. This strikes many as ironic, but it isn’t, really – this is similar to what the Bush II administration did with Mohammed Khatami. Republican presidents in particular much prefer hot-headed Iranian leaders like Ahmadinejad because they’re easy to demonize. This policy practically guarantees another hot head in Teheran.

The neocon lobe of Trump's tiny brain.

The frankly laughable Pompeo took the occasion of his announcement to rattle through a litany of Iran’s terroristic offenses over the decades, such as the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, carried out by a nascent Hezbollah. Naturally, every action taken by Hezbollah is attributed to Iran, but just to focus on this one example – in 1983, the U.S. was supporting Saddam Hussein in his then 3-year-old invasion of Iran, a conflict that killed upwards of 900,000 Iranians over eight years. Hezbollah had risen in opposition to the invasion of Lebanon by Israel, which was essentially supported by the United States. Say what you like about the bombing, we were not simply minding our own business in those days. Add to that the fact that we worked with British intelligence to bomb a mosque in Lebanon around that time, and then ask … who’s the terrorist?

One thing to remember with the Trump administration: there’s the personal venality and self-dealing of Trump himself, and then there’s the craven policies of the institutional Republican party. Often those things intersect in toxic ways, and I think this terror designation is one of those instances.

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jp

Political Rants

Them-ism.

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This week started with our president, Donald Trump, threatening to close our southern border, from the Gulf to the Pacific, to keep brown people from entering the United States. There’s nothing surprising about this display – immigration is Trump’s signature issue, specifically the demonization of anyone attempting to emigrate from what he would term as “shit hole” countries. And yet, he seems hell-bent on policies that are practically guaranteed to increase the flow of migrants and refugees from south of the border rather than stem it. The recent increase in apprehensions of undocumented immigrants is illustrative of this.

Of course, part of the increase is simply due to the time of year – people are trying to cross before the summer heat sets in. But I think it’s pretty obvious that Trump’s hateful and aggressive policies and rhetoric on this issue are prompting desperate families and individuals to attempt the crossing between ports of entry, which have effectively been closed to asylum seekers. Bear in mind that it is completely within their legal rights to present themselves for an asylum claim wherever they cross, whether it’s at designated points of entry or in-between. By making it impossible for migrants to present their case in an orderly and timely fashion, the administration is leaving them no alternative to making the crossing at some other point. These are people who have no home to return to. Many have friends, family in the U.S. Threatening a total closure of the border only increases the urgency.

That wall makes your ass look big.

I think Trump’s policies may reflect a view of these migrant families as something akin to animals. It’s as if they don’t expect these people to have human concerns or any level of perception. Migrants are, in fact, reacting in understandable ways to the threats being hurled at them. Is it possible that Trump doesn’t understand that?

Call me a cynic, but I think the administration knows that their policies and rhetoric increase undocumented immigration. They want to create a sense of crisis so that their voters will remain in a state of frenzy over the impending invasion of caravans of brown people. Though I suspect they may be a little reluctant to follow through on their threat to close the border “100 percent”, as Trump has said. As much as he affects not to like NAFTA, it is the law of the land, and as such, there’s a tremendous amount of cross-border commerce, supply chain activity, etc., not to mention many, many thousands of people crossing back and forth on a daily basis. Closing the border would effectively shut down large sectors of our industrial base, throwing a monkey wrench into what is literally Trump’s only substantive argument for re-election: the supposedly strong economy. (Strength is a relative thing. It’s stronger than it was, but mostly to the benefit of the wealthy.)

Trump may be an idiot, but he’s probably not enough of a fool bring the economy to a screeching halt in an effort to rile up his bigoted base of supporters. We shall see.

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jp

Political Rants

The hard problem.

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Senate Republicans tried-on their comedy shoes this week, “debating” something they were breezily referring to as the Green New Deal but which was actually just a straw horse resolution they whacked like a pinata to show how proudly retrograde they are.  In the wake of the Typhoon in Mozambique and other recent climate-fueled disasters, this was a pretty remarkable exercise in ignorance and tone-deafness. No, I don’t expect anything better from what Noam Chomsky has accurately described as the most dangerous organization in human history. The Republicans literally stand alone in the world as the only major party that rejects the science of climate change. Quite a distinction.

Not that there isn’t some value in such a spectacle. It certainly focuses the mind on how much work we have to do. My hope is that all of my leftist and progressive friends and colleagues fully understand just how difficult this climate fight will be. This is not just about developing and advocating for big ideas. We can only move this process forward by mounting an effective inside/outside strategy – organizing a large, broad mobilization out in the communities and electing the most progressive politicians we can possibly elect.  We need to do more than just win power, which will be hard enough. We have to hold and sustain power over the next decade and a half particularly, as that is pretty much all the time we have left to turn this ship around. That will take an enormous effort and, really, a new kind of politics that makes a material difference in the lives of ordinary people.

Note to rookie comedian Mike Lee: don't quit your day job.

How are we going to convince millions upon millions of Americans to go with this Green New Deal framework? Well, part of the challenge is that climate change is what may be called a genuinely hard problem. There’s the tendency to compare climate change to the Great Depression, but that’s kind of misleading. Yes, the Depression affected almost everyone in the country, but its worst effects could be mitigated by some money in your pocket. Massive collective effort in the 1930s had the potential to provide relief relatively rapidly – relief that would be felt by a large segment of society. Climate change is more complicated. We can’t tell people that, if you do this important work, the climate will be noticeably better – that’s just not likely. We’re asking people to save the world for future generations … and it’s just possible that our best efforts might not even accomplish that. So in addition to emphasizing that concern for future generations, we need to flesh out the “new deal” component of the plan … the part that will deliver some level of equity and prosperity to ordinary Americans.

Don’t get me wrong – I am 100% in favor of a Green New Deal. But let’s proceed with our eyes open. This won’t be a cake walk.

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jp

Political Rants

Empire news.

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Brazil’s fraudulently elected president Jair Balsonaro visited with the marginally less detestable Donald Trump this past week – a reported love fest in which Trump not only announced Brazil’s new status as a “non-NATO ally” (which means lots more weapons for Balsonaro to use against his own people) but breezily suggested elevating Brazil to full NATO membership …. which is a little strange, and may have taken Trump’s advisors somewhat by surprise. The two pretenders also discussed the ongoing U.S. attack on Venezuela, which Balsonaro is happy to join in on. Of course, that would only make him like most of our political class here at home, which has openly supported the coup attempt by right-wing Venezuelan politician Juan Guaido … as have much of our corporate media.

Just to single out a particularly egregious recent example, NPR’s insipid Morning Edition ran a piece by one-time journalist Phillip Reeves about the crisis in Venezuela. The framing of the piece was typical of Reeves and NPR – through the lens of U.S. historic role in the hemisphere; that of a hegemonic power. “How is the president of Venezuela still in power?” asks host Steve Inskeep in the intro, adding that the U.S. is “moving to choke off the oil revenue that supports the socialist government.” First of all, that revenue has already been “choked off.” Second, NPR always characterizes these siege-like sanctions as only punishing the government, not the people of Venezuela. Finally … “socialist”? What the hell kind of socialist country has as many wealthy people as Venezuela does? Yes, the government controls the oil industry, but that pre-dates Chavez. The neo-colonial economy of the country is one based principally on export of petroleum – that’s largely why the economy is in turmoil.

NPR: Giving Venezuela the Iraq treatment

Reeves’s story suggests an opposition under pressure, but what he’s describing is a self-proclaimed president, Guaido, who is still functioning inside the country, openly calling for intervention by the hemispheric superpower … and yet, still not incarcerated by this supposedly very oppressive government. Every mention of Maduro or the government emphasizes the label “socialist” and paints the regime as dictatorial. Chavez, Reeves writes, was Maduro’s “socialist mentor” who “took power in 1999” (i.e. won the first of several elections). Reeves talks to several Guaido supporters, most English-speaking, but only one Maduro supporter, whom he describes as “a lifelong communist” who lives in a “ramshackle home.” This sixty-five year old man, Reeves reports with seeming disbelief, is “convinced the U.S. is at war with Maduro to seize Venezuela’s oil.” Where would he get THAT idea? (Well … from Trump himself, from John Bolton … from recent and not-so-recent history.)

Pretty amazing stuff to run on the 16th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq – an anniversary that Morning Edition didn’t see fit to mark in any serious way. You’d think that any outlet that was as flat-footed as NPR was in the run-up to the Iraq War might have learned enough from the experience not to mindlessly serve the interests of a bellicose administration set on regime change. And you would be disappointed.

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jp

Political Rants

Bad gig.

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There’s been a lot of crowing about how great the economy is now, with low unemployment, marginally rising wages, etc. (Sure, only 20,000 jobs were gained last month, but what the hell … rich people are making a lot of money, and that brings the average up.) Every administration takes any opportunity to exaggerate their accomplishments, but this claim of “full employment” is frankly laughable and doesn’t hold up to even the slightest scrutiny. What lurks behind the seemingly strong job numbers is the fact that many, many of these “jobs” are not really jobs at all. I’m referring to the vaunted “Gig Economy”, which currently employs about 36% of all American workers – a staggering statistic.

Unemployed

This isn’t a Trump-only thing – the gig phenomenon really got going under Obama, and they presented these “jobs” and part-time employment as evidence of their success, just as the current administration does (though with a bit less verve). Anyone who has worked as a contractor knows what total bullshit this is. As one who worked in the original “gig economy” – the music industry – I can tell you that, aside from the amount of effort involved, it’s the furthest thing from having a real job that you can get.  You have no security. You receive no benefits. If you get sick, it’s your hard luck. You are, in large measure, perpetually unemployed, always scraping for the next gig. Sure, some people thrive in this type of arrangement, but most struggle with very little reward.

This is great news for business owners who use contractors of various descriptions. Contractors cost a lot less than employees. There are few enforceable responsibilities employers have toward informal workers. And particularly with these app-driven companies like Uber, etc., when one gigger doesn’t work out, there are many more ready to take his or her place. That makes it hard to organize, hard to demand better wages or working conditions. In short, these are not jobs; they are contracts, and as such, ones in which all of the obligations point one way – toward the gig worker. This is why wages have remained pretty much flat for a very long stretch, though there has been some small upward movement this past quarter.

All of you gig workers out there: you have my sympathy. You deserve better than this type of “full employment”, as do we all.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

No peace.

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The much-anticipated summit in Vietnam between Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un ended without a deal. It’s pretty obvious that Trump’s shoot-from-the-hip approach to diplomacy is less than optimal. On top of that, there’s plenty of space in the empty skull of his for unsavory characters like John Bolton to take up residence. I suspect he was the cause of the breakdown. It sounds as though the discussion about nuclear technology was broadened by the U.S. delegation to include chemical and biological weapon systems as well. The president’s post-summit statement didn’t go there, of course, but that’s no surprise. I’m not convinced that he knows entirely what took place in Vietnam, he’s such a ding dong.

There's a lot of love there.

Nevertheless, his impulse towards talking this out is positive, and I support the effort, even though he’s probably coming at it from entirely the wrong direction. Any effort towards peace on the Korean peninsula is worth pursuing, in my view, though U.S. policymakers of both major parties would likely disagree. I’ve written elsewhere in these pages about my thoughts on our government’s motivations for prolonging this conflict. I don’t think Trump is part of that consensus, and that is probably a frustration to the foreign policy establishment. It’s hard to be sure about what’s happening here, but we are faced with the unusual circumstance of the president being very nearly right about something.

Of course, the upshot of this is that the mainstream, center-left media, like MSNBC, are pummeling Trump over his failure to reach a deal. Worse, they criticize his decision not to hold those enormous joint military exercises with South Korea, characterizing it as a gift to Kim Jong Un. They have also been harping on American student Otto Warmbier, who died after being released from North Korean custody. And just this week, the focus has been on North Korea’s mothballed missile site showing signs of being brought back into operation. It’s kind of a full-court press on the evils of Kim and the incompetence of Trump.

This is just stupid. I understand the impulse to oppose Trump at every opportunity (except, of course, on Venezuela), but this hammering over Korea turns the heat up on a volatile situation that threatens hundreds of thousands of lives. We were a whisker away from all-out war a little over a year ago, and that was not a good place to be. I’m not saying to avoid reporting on this diplomatic dance; I’m saying that the editorializing is over- the-top and not helpful to the cause of peace.

So, liberals … dial back the Korea rhetoric a bit. Let’s encourage this administration to do something useful, like end this pointless conflict that began with our hubris and stupidity more than 70 years ago. There are plenty of things you can attack Trump over – this shouldn’t be one of them.

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jp

Political Rants

Old time religion.

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When I listen to mainstream reporting on the standoff in Venezuela, I come away with the strong impression that the press has not learned anything whatsoever from their failures in the run-up to the Iraq war back in 2002-03. I know – I shouldn’t be surprised. Ironically, Trump’s targeting of the mainstream press rings a vague bell with many who recall their catastrophic support for Bush’s big middle eastern adventure. As is often the case, the Orange Disaster  approaches being right on this issue from entirely the wrong direction. (The same might be said of his current policy on North Korea, though that might actually result in something positive, unlike his targeting of journalists.)

Do not adjust your television

From an institutional perspective, it makes total sense that MSNBC, CNN, and the major networks would be almost totally on board the Trump train as it steams towards Caracas. These outlets are owned by corporations that are deeply vested in the imperial enterprise. Their news organizations are run by people who can’t see this crisis in any kind of equitable, non-interventionist fashion. And it’s not like they haven’t had a lot of helpful hints thrown at them, like the hiring of notorious war criminal Elliott Abrams to run the Venezuela desk, or execrable John Bolton’s crowing about how American oil companies can do good business with a Guaido-run government. Even when the quiet parts are said out loud, the media hews to the official line.

I think it’s fair to say that our two-party political culture effectively sets the parameters of debate within which our mainstream press operates. So when the leadership of the Democratic party in essence agree with the Republican president that this extreme right-wing opposition legislator who declared himself president of Venezuela should be seen as just that, no major newspaper or broadcast outlet is going to step outside of that political boundary. That is why, for example, there is no better method of determining where the center of power is in America than listening to an hour of news programming on NPR. It is why corporate-fueled media so worship bipartisanship, calls for civility, and “reaching across the aisle.” It is why television news show hosts are the primary constituencies for Howard Schultz’s toy presidential campaign.

They still got religion, my friends. They have learned nothing in the last 18 years.

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jp

Political Rants

False outrage.

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Trump isn’t happy with the compromise plan being served up by the Congressional Conference Committee to Avoid A Second Pointless Shutdown. That’s certainly a good sign. Whenever Trump is unhappy about something, an angel gets her wings. Still, the Trump administration is always about fifty things in any given day, some retreads from previous cycles, some new bullshit, invariably something to get under nearly anyone’s skin. The things I probably found most irritating this week (and that’s always a hot contest) were Trump’s Texas adventure, the big speech at El Paso, and his sloppily calling for Rep. Ilhan Omar to resign. The former of these items was infuriating for obvious reasons; the latter more because it was dog-piling on criticisms of the Congresswoman from a broad swath of people, including many in the Democratic party.

Totally not antisemiticOmar is the perfect target for Trump. She’s a woman, a person of color, an immigrant from Somalia, and a Muslim who, like many Somali women, wears a headscarf. The orange-faced jackass has attacked all of those things separately on many occasions – by attacking Omar, he gets more bang for the buck. Would that he were the only one so eager to jump on her over an anti-AIPAC tweet. Democratic leadership really showed their ass this week, following up on their shameful support of Trump’s Venezuela policy from the previous week. A really poor performance. Still, Trump and Kevin McCarthy both get extra credit for crying antisemitism when their own track records on bigotry are unambiguously offensive. Both McCarthy and Trump made George Soros the bête noir of the mid-term campaign last year. Not subtle.

I don’t know that I would attribute fanatical support of Israeli government policy solely to receiving money from AIPAC, but Omar is right to call the lobbying group out, as they take an extreme right position on just about every aspect of Israel’s various domestic and foreign policy actions. Moreover, politicians from both major parties regularly try to out-do one another in their speeches before AIPAC conferences, trying to establish which of them does a better imitation of Netanyahu or someone further to the right flank of Likud. The problem is more with the politicians than the lobby, and their cravenness on this issue occurs in the context of an American foreign policy that is in lock-step with the Israeli government, regardless of what they do. That’s just bad policy, no matter what government we’re talking about.

Glad to see Omar give Elliott Abrams a pain in the ass. Somebody sorely needs to.

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jp

Political Rants

State of it, 2019.

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I would be remiss not to comment, first of all, on the style and delivery of Trump’s second State Of The Union address this past Tuesday night. Plainly, he is terrible at reading from a teleprompter. I don’t know whether it’s a vision issue or some pathology further back in that thick skull of his, but man goddamn, what a horrible read. Beyond that, though, he obviously did not rehearse the speech to any significant degree. It was a rocky road, prosody-wise, for little lord Trump-leroy from beginning to end. An embarrassing performance all around.

As for the content, just a couple of points:

Really cares about those kids.Immigration. Beyond the same lies, distortions, and barely concealed bigotry that usually erupt from his festering maw, Trump used the well-worn SOTU practice of using guests as rhetorical human shields in his argument for the Wall, greater immigration enforcement, and so on. This time it was family members of a U.S. citizen victim murdered by an MS13 member. Of course, Trump could bring in dozens of such cases if he can find them, and it would no more prove his case than this sorry demonstration. People get murdered in America, including a relatively small number at the hands of immigrants. Crucially, his “get tough” policy makes these victims less safe. By rounding up undocumented aliens by the thousands, Trump’s agents are creating a strong disincentive for members of that community to call the cops when they either witness or become victimized by gang activity. Just more evidence that bigotry is not only wrong and immoral – it’s just effing dumb.

Iran Deal. Trump had just told an interviewer a few days ago that he wanted to keep troops on an American base in Iraq to “keep an eye on Iran” – something he apparently failed to discuss with the Iraqi government. Then, in this remarkably poorly-wrought SOTU address, the old man railed against the Islamic Republic, calling it the most prominent state sponsor of terror and accusing it of doing “bad things” in the region. He has adopted the broadly-used imperial rhetoric on Iran, attributing every action carried out by Hezbollah to Tehran. And, of course, they hate Hezbollah because it is an effective fighting force that restricts Israel’s ability to strike  Lebanon at will. That’s what we and the Israeli government call “terrorism”.  Of course, his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear accord just scotches what was a great deal for the U.S. – a pledge to restrain themselves while we continue to occupy countries on either side of them and threaten them daily. What’s to complain about there?

Oh, right. Obama did it. And John Bolton wants war. How could I have forgotten?

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jp

Political Rants

Bad pennies.

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You’ve heard me mention this before (if you’ve been following this blog long enough), but our former president George W. Bush was a big believer in accountability for the powerless; for the powerful, not so much. It’s up to us to apply that principle to those in power, no matter how lofty their position. That’s why it’s particularly galling to see war criminal Elliott Abrams ascend to high office once again. Bush’s father H.W. pardoned this creature, giving him a new lease on life as a decision maker – a lease he has exercised more than once in the years since his heyday during the Reagan administration.

He was pardoned, but not his hairAbrams was an essential player in Reagan’s war on Central American peasantry throughout the 1980s. He worked to cover up the hideous El Mozote massacre in El Salvador at the end of 1981, then went on to flak for that murderous government for the balance of his tenure. He defended the mass murderer Rios Montt in Guatemala during that period under the banner of anti-communism – a position he has proudly owned up to ever since, even though the former Guatemalan dictator was posthumously convicted of genocide in his home country (and the United States was called out by the court for supporting him). He was convicted as part of the Iran-Contra prosecution, then pardoned by pappy Bush so that he could soldier on into junior’s administration and make a mess of our policy toward Haiti, Israel Palestine, and everything else he could get his greasy hands on.

This is like getting the old band back together, frankly. Bolton, Bush Jr.’s asinine United Nations Ambassador, now Abrams. Where the hell are Secord and Poindexter? (For that matter, where is Abrams’ hair? Is it still in jail for his crimes?) For all his incoherent rhetoric about breaking longtime Republican orthodoxy regarding foreign interventions like Afghanistan and Syria, Trump is assembling a cadre of proven war criminals who are working on a new conflict, most likely with Iran, though it’s possible they will attempt a warm-up with an attack on Venezuela first. People like Bolton, Abrams, and Pompeo have found in Trump the perfect vehicle to achieve their interventionist aims. He’s a kind of Trojan Horse through which neocons can climb back into the driver’s seat and take us over the cliff, once again.

All I can say is, resist. These people have been discredited multiple times and they keep coming back. The only way we can stop them is by resisting, voting, speaking up.

luv u,

jp