Tag Archives: George H.W. Bush

Political Rants

When Losing starts to mean winning, we lose

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Democracy is always an approximation. The countries we describe as being democratic have systems that exclude some voters, make it hard to participate in one way or the other, and are otherwise imperfect. That’s to be expected. We don’t aspire to imperfection, of course. In many countries, people try to do the best they can with what they’ve got. In France, it’s the fifth republic. In Britain, constitutional monarchy. And right here, we have the U.S. constitution – penned by rich white men, for rich white men.

During the Bush administration, people around the president were fond of saying that the the constitution isn’t a straitjacket. (Of course, they were mouthing those words in defense of torture.) Still, we are kind of locked into certain interpretations of it, and as such remain firmly under minority rule – just as the founding fathers envisioned it. I know others have said this, but apart from 2004, the insurrectionist party (formerly called the Republicans) lost the popular vote in every presidential race since George Herbert Walker Bush was elected in 1988. And yet they “won” 3 out of those seven races. Minority rule.

Narrowing the halls of justice

It goes beyond just the raw numbers of presidential terms served. Republican presidents have had far greater consequence than their Democratic counterparts over this period. Nowhere is this truer than with respect to the Supreme Court. Between Bush Jr.’s two terms and Trump’s term, they have appointed five of the sitting justices – Democrats only three. And we are seeing the results in the form of more and more draconian decisions being handed down by a court majority that is openly contemptuous of the public will.

We are being forced, as a nation, to accept an extremist view of abortion, gun rights, regulatory agencies, and others things. The Supreme Court is like our version of the Supreme Islamic Council in Iran or the old Soviet Politburo. But really, more like the former – they tell us what laws will stand, which will not. They tell us who is a person with full rights and who isn’t. They are aggressively unelected and unconcerned with prevailing sentiments. And there really isn’t much of anything we can do except wait for their next decision. Sure, we can push for court expansion and other reforms, but we have to do so within the constraints their decisions establish, and there are many.

More election drama

With the fall elections approaching, one wonders if the results will be broadly recognized. You can bet that, wherever Republicans do badly, there will be challenges, particularly in states with GOP dominated legislatures and GOP governors. I would like to think that people on the leftward side will take this election seriously and show up in unprecedented numbers, but we shall see. The pro abortion rights vote in Kansas certainly came as a surprise, especially since the ballot measure was designed to be confusing as hell. But even with a massively lopsided majority, Republicans are forcing a recount.

This is what we can expect. We have to be willing to fight back, non-violently (though I understand the need for self defense in oppressed communities). Honestly, we have to get this right. Allowing them to continue to claim victory whether or not they win races is just a recipe for authoritarianism. We know where they want to go – they keep telling us. Viktor Orban is the model they prefer. We need to believe them when they tell us who they are.

Keeping your options open

I would admonish you to vote, but I’ve done that before and look where it’s gotten us. Suffice to say that I am voting, and I encourage you to do the same (and to encourage others to do the same). If only to keep the option to vote open for the years ahead.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.

Political Rants

Just a few short minutes to midnight

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Sometimes it’s hard to ignore the extent to which our past haunts us. I suspect that most senior news editors grew up during the cold war. That may be why our media culture seems to be stuck in a very retrograde vision of the world. That east v. west pattern was struck deep, and it will take more than a little rain to wear it off.

The current crisis unfolding in eastern Europe is a chilling example of this. If Americans rely on the mainstream media to shape their perception of what’s happening overseas, they will not hear a single skeptical voice regarding our current policy. And if this administration doesn’t get a lot of push-back on this issue, we may find ourselves on the brink of a terminal nuclear war before we even know what’s happening.

If you thought you were safe because Trump exited the White House last January, think again.

The cost of NATO expansion

I’ve blogged about this before, but it’s worth repeating. Nations have enduring interests, and regardless of who is running the country, leaders will pursue them any way they can. If someone interferes with this pursuit, there will likely be hard feelings, perhaps conflict. With regard to Russia, vital interests include, crucially, not being threatened with invasion from the West, particularly. That sentiment is the result of their having been invaded three times since the rise of Napoleon, the last time at the cost of 20 million souls.

When the Soviet Union fell, the United States (under then-president George H. W. Bush) pledged to Gorbachev not to expand NATO any further to the east. The United States quickly abrogated that agreement, bringing Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and the Baltic states into the alliance through the 1990s and 2000s. Further expansion into Ukraine would bring NATO right to the border of Russia, and they find that prospect to be unacceptable. And yet Biden and his foreign policy team will give no assurance that NATO membership for Ukraine is off the table.

This is nuts. The Doomsday Clock isn’t inching towards midnight for nothing. War with Russia simply cannot happen – so what the fuck are these people thinking?

The pivot to Asia

Speaking of indefensible positions, the Biden Administration is ratcheting up the pressure on China over various policy disputes. The administration tends to point an accusatory finger at Beijing over their treatment of the Uyghurs (with some justice), as well as their policy on Taiwan, Hong Kong, and shipping lanes around the periphery of Asia. There is merit in some of these positions, but it’s kind of hard to argue that Biden and his State Department are acting out of principle.

We can do next to nothing to affect how China behaves. But there are other bad actors amongst the family of nations with whom we have tremendous influence. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE, Israel … even Turkey relies on us to some extent. The Saudi-led, U.S. enabled war on Yemen has produced the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, and yet we’re still shipping arms to MBS. That’s to say nothing of what we ourselves have done in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria.

Worthy and unworthy victims

Talking heads on Morning Joe spent most of the last decade obsessing over Syria and Russian aggression. Now roughly as many people have died in Yemen as during the Syrian conflict, and there’s not a peep out of those fuckers.

Hey, if you want to save lives and help the oppressed, start with the low-hanging fruit … namely those we actively persecute, by our own actions and by proxy.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Usual Rubbish

Tragedy, then farce.

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The Trump administration has been pushing the sale of nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia, according to a report from the House Government Oversight Committee, now functional once again since the Democratic takeover of that body. Some pretty good reporting on this from ProPublica suggests, predictably, that Trump’s family would benefit materially from such an arrangement, in the form of lucrative Saudi contracts for the now bankrupt nuclear plant designer Westinghouse, which has garnered Trump friend Tom Barrack as a major investor. ( I believe the consortium is eyeing Jared Kushner’s 666 building for office space.) Barrack wants to be part of a crackpot “Marshall Plan” for the Middle East that will involve building dozens of nuclear reactors in Saudi. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, the same things that have gone wrong on previous occasions when we have moved in this direction. Oh, yes … we have been here before, though perhaps without the craven self-dealing that Trump adds to virtually every initiative. In the 1960s, we were pushing the “atoms for peace” program, and at one point we were working with the British to help Iran (under the Shah) develop nuclear weapons – this according to longtime Labor party leader the late Tony Benn. In the late 1980s, George H.W. Bush was planning to send nuclear scientists over to Iraq for talks with Saddam Hussein’s government. And we have, of course, looked the other way with regard to Israel’s nuclear program, which remains unacknowledged, even though it continues to affect regional politics.

Now, there are historical and institutional reasons why our relationship with Saudi Arabia is unlikely to go south in a way similar to our little imperial dance with Iraq or Iran. But it’s hard to predict what will happen to any despotic regime. I’m sure back in the 1960s U.S. policymakers thought Iran would remain within the fold for the long term. My sense is that on this issue, like other foreign policy issues, Trump is being driven around like a little toy car by his advisors. People like Bolton, Pompeo, and Elliott Abrams work their strategies through people like Trump, who has little or no interest in international politics and is really only focused on what is best for him, his children, his son in law, his cronies. In a place like Saudi, they can all get what they want even if their goals are divergent from one another.

We live in dangerous times, to be sure. There’s nothing more dangerous than a useful idiot.

luv u,

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

Political Rants

Empire redux.

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There were some hair-on-fire moments on talk television this week about Trump acting as a Russian “agent” or “asset” or something similar. I have my own thoughts on this issue, which I’ve shared previously on this blog, but what I find kind of interesting about this discourse is the degree to which it reveals the state of mainstream opinion on national security issues. Mind you, I don’t mean popular opinion; rather, “articulate” opinion of the kind you find on Morning Joe and other similar platforms. The ability of the American imperial project to repackage itself in such a way as to appeal to another generation of gullible subjects has always fascinated me, and we’re seeing it play out again on screens large and small all across the nation.

One of the points of outrage regarding Trump came from a newspaper piece that reported on the president floating the idea of pulling the U.S. out of NATO. The reaction went beyond just the usual tropes about NATO’s vital mission of keeping the peace in Europe since the end of the last war and how Russia is dedicated to pushing it back and splitting it up. Some commentators suggested that the idea of ending NATO is something so outlandish and outside of the mainstream that it simply had to come from Russia. Of course, unless these people are all younger than they look, they might all recall that at the end of the cold war many Americans questioned whether NATO still had a mission. People can disagree on that, but it isn’t outlandish to raise the question, particularly in that context.

NATO expansion since 1945

What’s more, it doesn’t take a Putin apologist to suggest that the Russian government has a more than defensible reason to be suspicious of the NATO expansion that has taken place over the past three decades. For one thing, Russia was promised by the U.S. – George H.W. Bush specifically – that NATO would not expand one inch to the east. That was a lie, of course. Why would Russians care about that? The biggest reason is that they have been invaded by foreign alliances three times in the last century, the last time at the cost of 20 million lives. When the Soviet Union ceased to be a thing, I’m sure their expectation was that NATO would go away. It didn’t, and like any hammer looking for something to do, it sees everything as a nail.

As Trump prepares another generation of phony missile defense weapons, one can only hope that these aren’t coffin nails.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Warever.

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John Bolton and Mike Pompeo made the rounds of every American president’s favorite region this past week, on behalf of their grizzly leader. The press story was that they were explaining the administration’s plan for withdrawal from Syria; really, this will be a much more gradual process than the president promised over the holidays to howls of protest from the national security talking heads. Of course, it’s a case of Trump doing a potentially positive thing in a really ham-handed fashion and for all the wrong reasons. So naturally he had to walk it back. Not the promise of “The Wall”, you understand … just the more recent promise of total withdrawal from Syria. And partial withdrawal Afghanistan.

Only ever right for the wrong reasons.I’ll believe it when I see it. The U.S. presidency has evolved to a point of foreign policy cravenness that pulling all troops out of any conflict, no matter how pointless or long-winded, is simply not an option. And before someone reminds me, yes, we do still have troops in Europe, Japan, and South Korea after more than 70 years. It’s basically the same dynamic. Pull the troops out and they’ll say you’re weak. No president, particularly not the current one, can willingly swallow that accusation. And so it continues – occupations stretching out to the vanishing point, burning up uncounted billions of defense dollars (and I really mean uncounted) and staking our young people out in hopeless situations that no application of military power can solve.

In essence, we are trapped in the box that was constructed in the wake of the Vietnam war. The so-called “Vietnam Syndrome” that George H.W. Bush declared cured in 1991 had two major components. One was a quite reasonable public distaste for foreign wars and military interventions, developed quite independently of articulate elite opinion, which almost universally supported the aims of our murderous adventure in Indochina. The second piece was a reluctance on the part of elected officials to institute conscription. Draft registration has been in effect since it was reestablished in 1980, but no draft has been declared since the end of the Vietnam War and none is likely to be. The reason is simple: politicians are unwilling to ask for that level of sacrifice from the American public. There’s no conscription because that would make presidents, senators, and congressmembers unpopular – period.

That’s what drives these endless wars. We are not compelled to fight, and our wars are financed on the U.S. Treasury’s credit card, so we don’t have to pay extra taxes, either.  So if you’re wondering why we still have our all-volunteer army in Afghanistan, that’s basically why. Start drafting people (or even taxing people) and it would be over in six months, tops.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Cop out.

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Overwhelmed by all the mainstream news coverage of the COP conference in Katowice, Poland? I thought not. It’s possible that the international climate negotiations in Poland have been covered in passing by the evening news shows, etc., but I haven’t seen a single mention of them on the various talk shows, most notably on MSNBC, which is purported to be the centrist-liberal network. Their constant obsession is the Mueller probe, and while I can understand the temptation to follow such a strongly narrative-driven story, to do so to the exclusion of all other news is craven on the part of any organization that lays claim the mantle of investigative journalism.

Old King Coal.Probably the best source on what’s happening at Katowice is DemocracyNow! – Amy Goodman and her crew have been broadcasting from Poland all week, covering the activities of the American delegation. Yes, there is an official U.S. delegation, even though our lord emperor Trump the first has chosen to withdraw from the weak as dishwater (but better than nothing) Paris Accord. The delegation is headed by former Priebus aide Wells Griffith, who ran a failed campaign for congress in Alabama recently. Goodman chased Griffith around the hall at one point, asking him to comment on the administration’s hallucinogenic policies on climate change – he refused, walked faster, practically ran to get away from them. (Worth a look.)

What are they doing there? Same thing the conference is doing in Poland – making every effort to legitimize coal as a usable energy source. Recall that Trump’s EPA administrator is a coal industry lobbyist (I would add “former” to that title, but honestly, he still is). Poland’s government, too, is a big promoter of coal – that’s why they are hosting COP 24 in a building designed to look like the inside of a coal mine. Not too subtle. Though it has announced its intention to leave the Paris Accord, the U.S. government is doing all it can to steer the negotiations away from any serious effort at attacking this problem, teaming up with other bad global actors and hawking its extractive industries. It’s not all that different from Obama’s ridiculous “all of the above” policy, except that Trump’s all of the above doesn’t include renewables.

Mind you, this meeting has been going on for 24 years and we are still waiting for serious action on the greatest threat to confront us in the history of humankind. That’s why the corporate media pays no attention – they no the intention is to do nothing while looking like you’re doing something. Unacceptable.

Not Too Soon. I think Greg Grandin did a great job of remembering George H.W. Bush in all of his patrician glory in last week’s Nation. Check it out.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Old number 41.

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I don’t take joy in anyone’s passing, great or small. We’re all living beings with a limited time in this timeless universe, and there’s nothing to celebrate when death takes its toll, even when the departed is someone you are not at all fond of. I would have to count George H. W. Bush as someone who fits that description. Despite all of the glowing tributes from members of our political elite and millionaire media personalities, he was an awful president in a lot of ways – one that left a toxic legacy we’re still grappling with. The invasion of Panama alone was enough to wipe away any pretense of a “kind and gentle” leader, but the administration of Bush 41 went far beyond that atrocity.

Bush nice? Ask a Haitian. Ask an Iraqi.In listening to the hagiographic coverage put out by NPR, NBC and MSNBC, it’s clear that H. W, Bush’s conservative politics is a kind of “sweet spot” for our mainstream press – the ideal foil to the uncouth hair-hatted fiend who currently occupies the White House.  Like the McCain funeral, this is an opportunity to demonstrate their middle-of-the-road reactionary bona fides. It’s as if there’s Trump and then everyone else, and they take the side of the latter. The stupidity of the rhetoric is kind of sobering, though. On Morning Joe, Willie Geist was talking about how Bush 41 chose to join the Navy as an aviator, as if that was a singularly selfless act. The guy is so distant from the notion of conscription that he barely knows what he’s talking about. Note to Willie: Practically everybody ended up in uniform and shipped overseas in those days. Aside from a draft, there was enormous societal pressure to join up and do your part. Every military age male in my extended family at that time was sent to fight in World War II (one didn’t return, another committed suicide afterwards).  No shade on Bush 41 – he sacrificed during the war, but his experience was very, very common.

I won’t tick through George H. W. Bush’s record on Panama, on Haiti (supported the 1991 coup), on Iraq, on Central America (consummated the criminal terror war against Nicaragua), on the war on drugs, on AIDS policy (hands off), on Clarence Thomas, and so on. It’s been treated elsewhere in much greater detail by better writers than me. All I can say is that, while I’m sorry he’s dead, he was not a “kind and gentle” leader by any stretch of the imagination, and he played a central roll in getting us to the awful place we find our selves in now. While I was never a fan of Clinton, I was glad to see Bush go in 1993, and I’m still glad he never had that second term.

No secret why I wasn’t invited to the funeral. Again.

luv u,

jp

 

Political Rants

Old glory, old story.

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Flag day is next week – as it happens, the very day I’m scheduled for a colonoscopy. (Coincidence?) That said, it has felt like flag month – or even flag year – in this obligatory cheap seat reality show known as the Trump era. Literally must-see t.v., right? This past week we were treated to the hilarious spectacle of our trust-fund baby president with his hand over his heart, faking his way through a martial rendition of God Bless America by what looked like the Marine band. (Bad Lip Reading did a good version of this.) The occasion was Trump’s decision to un-invite the Philadelphia Eagles over the National Anthem “take-a-knee” controversy, which he exploits as a means of race-baiting and working up his bigoted base.

Stand beside her ... This transparent political ploy prompted some complaints among talking heads that this was in some way unprecedented. Nothing could be further from the truth. The national anthem, the flag, all of these superficial patriotic symbols have been used for political purposes pretty much my entire life through. Nixon rolled out the flag all the time, as did Reagan. The now-sainted George H.W. Bush made the pledge of allegiance a kind of litmus test for patriotism during the 1988 election. And protests like flag-burning become a major culture-war issue from time to time, particularly when the Republicans are in power and they have little else to complain about (because they’re getting their way).

So aside from being a far more transparently pathetic pantomime, there’s nothing unprecedented about a president demagoging the flag, the national anthem, etc. Trump is just talking to that 25 to 30 percent of the U.S. population that would follow him off a cliff and then back up the mountain again. He may be a big, greasy, over-privileged ball of shit, but to them he represents the very embodiment of white aggrievement. The bulk of his followers – not all working class by a long shot, by the way – respond to this kind of symbolism as well as his complementary attacks on people of color, with particular attention to those who attain some level of status (like professional athletes).

Reality television has taken over the Republic – that’s kind of new. But speaking as someone who has lived through the Nixon administration, the Iran hostage crisis, 9/11, and more, wrapping abusive politics in the flag is anything but.

luv u,

jp