Tag Archives: Morning Joe

Political Rants

The Whine That was heard ’round the world

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I just want to say, for the record, that Senator Lindsey Graham is a whiny little barnacle. The man has zero charisma, zero original ideas, and that’s why he attaches himself to the ample asses of men like Trump, McCain, you name it. Who’s next? I don’t know. Which right-wing garbage scow is likely to pass this way sometime soon?

In case you think I’m just going off on a random tirade, let me just say that I’m making this observation in reaction to the first days of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I shouldn’t single Graham out. The entire Republican side spent the day simpering about the unfairness of a process that has yielded them a 6 to 3 reactionary majority on the Supreme Court for the rest of any of our lives.

Playing to the freak mob

Confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees are mostly just opportunities for political grandstanding. Senator Josh Hawley, for instance, is shoring up his Trumpist/Q-anon conspiracy theorist base, suggesting that Judge Jackson’s judicial record on cases involving child sex offenders is somehow troubling. The specific language he’s using is crafted to appeal directly to the Q crowd, who espouse a retread version of the blood libel. Democrats are pedophiles, he’s suggesting, and this judge is enabling them.

Hawley’s concern for the children moves me close to tears. I can think of one easy way he could have made a difference in the lives of literally millions of American children: support the child tax credit. Of course, he voted against it, along with all of his Republican colleagues. Democrats might want to remind people of this from time to time. They might also want to remind people of Hawley’s support for the insurrectionists who attacked the capitol January 6, 2021.

Ancient grievances

Now, I don’t want to suggest that there was a “good old days” when this sort of political grandstanding didn’t happen. There was maybe a bit more congeniality back in the 1990s and before, but these hearings were still a freak show. Back when Orrin Hatch was the ranking member and Strom Thurmond the former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Hatch opened every confirmation hearing with a long, drippy appreciation of Thurmond, a life-long confirmed segregationist shit-bum. No lie – I heard it at least twice.

The Republican’s evident resentment of Democrats on the committee stems back to the Bork hearings in 1987. Even then conservatives dominated the Court, and while Bork was turned down by the Senate, another conservative jurist, Anthony Kennedy, was confirmed instead. GOP senators at least affect to still be mad about Bork, about Thomas, and certainly about Kavanaugh, suggesting that Democrats are wild-eyed extremists attacking poor unsuspecting Republicans as they leave the office at the end of the day. Would that they were.

The humanitarian gambit

Russia’s murderous attack on Ukraine continues, as do the corporate media personalities who argue for America’s entry into the war. It is nothing less than this. They are now pushing the humanitarian intervention line – the one first used to blow things up in the Balkans in the 1990s, later trotted out for Iraq and Libya. Mika Brzezinski on Morning Joe suggested to Biden’s pentagon spokesperson that not intervening might “make us look weak”.

They are using this to chip away at the administration’s resistance to direct military involvement in Ukraine. The left needs to be unified on this – no entry into this war, period. War with Russia is not an option, and hasn’t been for more than 75 years. We need to remind people of this simple, obvious fact – nuclear war means the end of organized human society, period. There is no justification for that level of risk to every living thing.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.

Political Rants

All the wrong parts of being right

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It’s been a busy week in politics and public policy, like drinking from a fire hose. In addition to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, the State of the Union was on Tuesday night, not to mention primaries in Texas. Of course, the attack on Ukraine is dominating the news, and understandably so. There’s nothing right about Russia’s campaign.

Personally, I am all in favor of extensive press coverage during wartime. What we’re seeing, though, in the United States is the propaganda machine kicking into high gear. Yes, it’s in support of the Ukrainian people, and yes, that’s the right position to take, but the level of overblown hyper patriotic romanticized treatment of war and resistance is really disturbing. That’s in part because I’ve seen this machine running on all cylinders before, and that never leads to good things.

Here are some of the things that bug me about mainstream coverage of the conflict:

They’re like us. And so are their lawns.

We’ve heard this from multiple correspondents on multiple news outlets. Sam Seder’s Majority Report talked about the phenomenon on Monday. They look like us, not like “refugees”. They’re prosperous, Christian, and, well, white. They’ve got homes and lives much like ours and could even live in the same neighborhood. Therefore, they are more worthy of our sympathy than those grimy old middle easterners.

Now, I should point out that these observations come in the midst of vital reporting about what’s happening in Ukraine. That coverage is essential, whether it’s delivered by major networks or by lowly citizen journalists. I just wish to hell they would cover every war with this level of energy, particularly ones like the Yemen conflict, which literally could not continue without our active help.

The mythical “no-fly zone”

The suggestion of a no-fly zone over Ukraine has been advanced by a number of people, including officials of the Ukrainian government. I don’t know what’s in those officials’ minds, but people over here don’t have a clear idea of how such a zone works. For one thing, it’s typically employed against developing nations who step out of line, like Iraq, which effectively had no air force.

Contrary to popular belief, no-fly zones are not a magic impenetrable shield. It involves deploying forces in mass, shooting down enemy (i.e. Russian) aircraft, when necessary, and keeping it up over the long term. If we were to undertake such a strategy, it would mean World War III. How that would help the Ukrainians is unclear to me. In fact, what’s abundantly clear is that this is the worst conceivable outcome and should be avoided at all costs. Crazy talk.

Kindness of strangers (or lack of same)

Over the past few days, I’ve been hearing television commentators wax poetic about the generosity of Ukraine’s neighboring countries with respect to their acceptance of refugees. On Morning Joe, panel members were gushing to Mika Brzezinski about how proud her father (architect of the first Afghan war) would have been of the Polish government.

What they haven’t been talking about so much is how the Poles are treating African and Indian residents of Ukraine who show up at their border. Democracy Now! covered this on Wednesday, and it isn’t pretty. But then Poland, like some other countries in the region, has a long record of turning away dark-skinned people. So much for the pride of Dr. Brzezinski.

Nuclear blackmail goes both ways

Putin made a big show of putting his nuclear forces on high alert. It’s not clear what this means exactly, but it’s been all over U.S. television, and it is unnerving, as it should be. What should be a much larger story, though, is the obvious fact that the United States maintains an effective first-strike policy with respect to nuclear weapons. That is to say, we have always refused to rule out first use. That is an implicit threat that the entire world, including Russia, has had to live with for more than seventy years. (See Dan Ellsberg’s book, The Doomsday Machine, for the full story.)

Bottom line, this is becoming a full orchestra of emotionally potent, manipulative coverage blasting out across multiple channels. Even though it’s obvious that a neo-fascist Russian government is unjustly attacking Ukraine, we need to keep our bearings. Don’t get swept away. We’ve seen this play before, and it doesn’t end well.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Get back onto that plague ship, you lazy prole!

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The chattering classes are having a hair-on-fire moment about labor. We’ve seen this coming for a while now. I commented on it back in July when retired ad man and political commentator Don Deutsch fired off a petulant little tweet about working people, then yakked about it with Joe Scarborough.

Well, they’re back, and it’s because the service is just not what it should be. Hell, do you realize Joe and Mika had to wait two hours for a flight because there weren’t enough baggage handlers? It’s like workers don’t want to work anymore. Unprecedented … or IS it?

An ill wind, indeed

When the Black Plague ripped through Europe in the 14th Century, it created a massive labor shortage. This was due to the fact that the disease may have killed as much as 1/3 of the population. The peasants who survived were reluctant to return to their rich masters’ fields. This compelled the gentry to sweeten the pot a bit – compensate the workers more, give them money, cut their rent, etc.

That was kind of a great leap forward for labor. Then the gentry passed a law that established a kind of maximum wage. This was to protect the essential feudal relationship between lord and peasant. (They had their own Donnie Deutcshes back then, of course.) It kind of backfired, though – there was a peasant rising, and they won some concessions. By 1500 the feudal system was giving way to another system of worker exploitation.

Here’s a tip for you

What television pundits are complaining about is simple: workers are saying “fuck this lousy job.” The wealthy underwriters of cable television don’t like this. This is the part of supply and demand that drives them nuts. Their pundits roll out the claim that lazy workers are all at home, eating grapes and collecting their federal unemployment enhancement checks.

The fact is, many workers who left their jobs were in tipped industries. Wait staff make sub-minimum wage plus tips, and it’s hard for them to demonstrate that they earned enough income to receive full unemployment. Worse, they get harassed and abused at work, and have to worry about catching COVID. Patrons will tell them to take off their mask if they want a tip. Who needs that bullshit?

Same old same old

Employers, large and small, are conveniently forgetting something: COVID is still killing people. The rolling three-day average is running over 1,100 deaths a day – that’s a 9/11 every third day. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to work remotely. The more poorly-paid, low-benefit occupations tend to be in-person only, and that’s why people are not returning to those jobs.

Also, if this pandemic has taught us anything it’s that withholding labor is an effective tool. If enough people do it, rich people start squawking. When you hear that sound, you know you’re doing something right.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

It ain’t deja vu until it’s over again.

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Quite a week in the history of American empire. I listened to the commentary unfold this week as the 40-year war in Afghanistan drew to a close and I was reminded of, well, 40 years ago. Around that time I read a collection of essays by Noam Chomsky unwrapping the reams of commentary that followed the end of another seemingly endless American war, the one in Vietnam. A lot of what he was writing about is just as true today as it was in the mid to late 1970s.

The collection was called Towards a New Cold War and I should probably re-read it. I suspect it would prove a useful guide to the dreck I am hearing on a daily basis from the mainstream media – specifically, in my case, from the panel on Morning Joe. That show is as close to the center of the imperial enterprise as any media property. They should rename it “The Blob Speaks” or something along those lines.

Bungling efforts to do good

One of the narratives that emerged from the disaster that was the Vietnam War was the myth of good intentions. It went something like this: we entered the conflict intending to save the Vietnamese, then things went wrong. Articulate opinion was making this case back in the mid to late seventies, and we are hearing their modern counterparts doing the same today with regard to Afghanistan.

I have seen minor variations on this theme. The most popular one, as far as I can tell, is the argument that we shouldn’t have tried to remake Afghanistan in our own image. In other words, the Afghans are too corrupt, ignorant, backward, etc., to appreciate our way of life, our mode of governance, etc. Our efforts to impose our innate goodness on them amounted to hubris, albeit a very benign variety of that vice. Ungrateful wretches!

Assessing the costs

Another subject of post-Vietnam reflection was the notion that the destruction was mutual. President Carter even framed Vietnam in those terms. As someone who lived through the war years, I must admit that I don’t recall the non-existent Vietnamese air force dropping napalm on my neighborhood or flattening my town with high explosives. Maybe I slept through it.

While I don’t want to minimize the suffering of our Afghanistan War vets – far from it – there’s no question but that Afghans bore the overwhelming brunt of the suffering through this conflict. They died in the hundreds of thousands, their country torn to pieces. We lost a lot of people, spent a lot of money, but have not felt the impacts of this war as much as Afghan families.

We care, damn it!

Then, of course, there’s the virtue signalling. Once the United States was out of Vietnam, we became obsessed with the fate of the people of Indochina. As people fled the destroyed remains of Vietnamese society, our opinion-makers used that as a cudgel against the newly unified government of Vietnam.

While the Morning Joe couch and other commentators now express concern for Afghan refugees, they said very little about Afghans over the past twenty years. The fact is, millions of Afghans have been displaced by this war, both internally and in neighboring countries, particularly Pakistan and Iran, since 2001. Want to help Afghan refugees? Look there first. And while you’re at it, consider helping refugees from our other wars in Iraq, Libya, and Yemen, for instance.

I could go on, but I’ll stop there. Suffice to say that I am glad we are ending this useless war. No more posts like the ten-year anniversary piece I did a decade ago, right? Let’s hope not.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

A short ending to the longest war

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There’s a lot that’s been said about what happened in Afghanistan over the past couple of weeks. Most of what you’ll hear on cable talk shows is a brand of imperial outrage that would be hard to mock with any justice. I would need a pith helmet and some bad white shorts, for starters. As I’ve said in previous posts, the imperial world view runs deep in our commercial media. It’s like the setting moon illusion – they just can’t help but see things that way.

I’ve got a few thoughts on this issue. Don’t expect to see me invited onto any daytime news shows anytime soon. What I’m about to say would likely make heads explode on Morning Joe.

First, do no harm

A lot of the criticism of Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan is deserved by this administration. I’ve said often enough that their foreign policy is abysmal, and now they’ve managed to make a mess of practically the only part of it that I agreed with. They’ve known this day was coming since before the inauguration – what the hell were they thinking?

I think the most reasonable explanation is that the Biden administration is terrified of taking in too many refugees. Sam Seder said this on Majority Report a few days ago. It’s like they don’t want to be yelled at by Republicans, so they let these Afghanis swing in the wind. That’s the thanks you get for working with us. You’re welcome, people of Afghanistan!

Bravery and cowardice defined

Another thing I’ve heard is outrage that Biden suggested the Afghan government forces didn’t fight hard enough. This is where the imperial worldview is crucial. Most television commentators I’ve seen appear to consider fealty to American war aims as the standard by which to judge bravery or cowardice.

Let’s face it – many Afghans took part in the U.S. supported military because they needed money. There’s nothing wrong with that. If they folded in the face of the Taliban advance, it’s because they didn’t want to be the last people to die defending a government that no one believes in. Who can blame them?

We always take this condescending view of our allies in-country whenever we invade and occupy another nation. The same stuff was said about the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), or the South Vietnamese forces. Somehow we expect these folks to fight to the death for our national objectives, and that’s plainly irrational.

Let them in

There’s no question but that we owe a massive debt to all Afghans for using their country mercilessly over the course of the last 45 years, first to bludgeon the Soviets, and later to satisfy post-9/11 bloodlust. The least we can do, at this point, is bring a large number of refugees stateside. I know Tucker Carlson and various other white supremacists think that this is some kind of “great replacement” conspiracy, but fuck those guys. If we suddenly care about Afghans, we should help the ones who need help.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Pirates (or landlords) of the Caribbean .

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Did I mention that the Biden Administration’s foreign policy is abysmal? I thought so. It’s always worth repeating, and the last couple of weeks have borne it out entirely.

On July 12, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken made a statement to the press regarding recent demonstrations in Cuba. Among some other boilerplate nonsense about our supposed commitment to human rights, Blinken told the press that the protesters “criticized Cuba’s authoritarian regime for failing to meet people’s most basic needs, including food and medicine,” chiding Cuba’s leaders that “peaceful protesters are not criminals”.

Okay, a couple of things. First, Cuba has been under sanction by the United States my entire life – sixty years – with the most punishing restrictions having been added during the Trump years. I’m not sure how well most Americans understand what these sanctions mean for a poor country like Cuba. They can’t do business with us, the regional hegemon, and other countries are threatened with retaliation if they trade with Cuba.

What this means, of course, is that food, medicine, and other goods are scarce. Now, I’m not claiming that the Cuban government is a model of efficiency, but I would say that any government that can maintain a standard of living exceeding that of its regional neighbors while under siege is doing something right.

Comparing like with like

I hate to keep bringing up Morning Joe, but when the protests began in Havana, the very next morning Joe Scarborough was sniping at the Cubans’ socialist “workers paradise”. “How’s that going?” snarked the former Florida congress member. Meanwhile in Colombia, massive protests against this capitalist banker’s paradise propped up by billions in U.S. aid were in their seventieth (and now eighty-fifth) day. That story didn’t make it onto the Morning Joe couch.

I know hypocrisy is kind of an impotent charge in this day and age, but honestly, the record of capitalist failure in Latin America is broad and deep. There is no lack of examples, no paucity of dumpster fires. I believe the Morning Joe crew commented on the “chaos” in Haiti the same day they cat-called Cuba, but of course when capitalist experiments fail abysmally, it’s always the fault of the populace.

Where’s the change?

What angers me most about this policy is that it doesn’t even reach the low standard of the Obama administration. Biden is literally leaving Trump’s extremist Cuba sanctions in place. He was in the government that decided at the eleventh hour to lessen tensions with Havana, and yet now he’s content with observing the new/old status quo.

Let’s face it – we have no standing to criticize Cuba on human rights, none at all. We support plenty of governments that abuse human rights on a far more horrific scale, including Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt … the list goes on and freaking on. Did I expect better from them? No, of course not. But that’s no reason not to be pissed off.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

When labor remembers how to say no

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What keeps a worker going to the job, day after day, even if s/he hates it like fire? The need for money, mostly. During the pandemic, however, that need was outweighed by something more basic – namely, the desire to stay alive.

When going to work began to entail risking your life for a broad swath of workers, those who had a choice in the matter chose to remain at home. The government made some effort to facilitate this, at least in some segments of the economy. There were those deemed essential workers who were compelled to risk their lives. This included many undocumented immigrants who picked our food and cared for our elderly while we hid from COVID.

Now that Americans are being strongly encouraged to return to their desks, their machines, their stations, etc., many are reluctant to do so. No doubt some folks have decided that this was an opportune time to drop out of the workforce entirely. Others are not convinced it’s safe. But I suspect many are holding back from returning to their crappy jobs because, frankly, they’ve had it with that shit, and who can blame them?

King Tut-Tut

Enter Donny Deutsch, some second-generation ad man who shows up on MSNBC every five minutes to share some rhetorical pearls of dubious provenance. Deutsch squeezed out this gem on Twitter the other day, then expanded on it when he appeared on Morning Joe:

Has the American work ethic softened? Maybe a little too much coddling of employees going on… just saying

So apparently this trust fund baby feels like capital isn’t disciplining labor sufficiently in the wake of the COVID shutdown. He feels like employers are being too flexible and are letting their workers work from home, etc. That’s undermining the “work ethic”. (I know he doesn’t own his dad’s business anymore, but if he did, I could tell you exactly why HIS employees wouldn’t be returning to the office. )

Green Solutions

It likely wouldn’t occur to someone like Deutsch that there is an obvious capitalist solution to the problem he’s describing. It’s called pay people more. It’s called treat them better.

Most of the jobs he’s talking about are ones that can easily be done remotely. If this pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that all this driving back and forth to office complexes is a tremendous waste of energy and resources. Even with many people choosing to stay out for a variety of reasons, I imagine a large percentage of those who’ve returned to the office work for an employer who is doing what Deutsch so admires – demanding that they sit at their workstation and look busy.

Times like these, I truly think that capitalism only survives by virtue of worker complacency, hopelessness, and cynicism. When some outside factor, like COVID, shakes things up, for a hot moment they can see the stupidity of this owner-wage slave relationship and start demanding more. There’s your silver lining.

luv u.

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
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One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor.

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This week the airwaves were filled with more breathless speculation than we’ve seen since the last major award show. Biden meeting with Vladimir Putin! The newly repopulated set of Morning Joe was all a-twitter with neo-Kremlinology. They even invited John Bolton on board to share his valuable perspective (though his only use might be as a reverse barometer).

The talking heads, I kid you not, were hoisting charts that compared the wait times of various heads of state who met with American presidents over the past fifteen years. If Biden comes a half hour late, what does that mean? Is Tony Blinken frowning too much? Jesus Christ, I wish I were joking. You would think, with all the air time, they would talk about the IMF treaty, or Open Skies …. something substantive. Not a chance.

The only mildly interesting piece of this whole sordid drama was the competition for the moral high ground underway between Biden and Putin, each playing to his own domestic audience.

Sympathy for the Devil

In the lead-up to the summit, Putin was interviewed by an NBC reporter, who asked him about Alexei Navalny, the Russian dissident (and ultra nationalist, btw). Now, there are plenty of counter examples Putin could have invoked in response if he wanted to demonstrate American hypocrisy. He instead chose the January 6 insurrectionists as examples of people being arrested for expressing political views.

That’s just plain adorable. Putin sees a gang of white supremacists trying to overthrow elective government as dissidents and freedom fighters, even though they had the backing of the President of the United States and more than a few members of the institution they were attacking that day. Hardly outsiders, and treated with relative kid gloves by the police. Of course, they wanted Putin’s favored candidate to remain in power – not because Putin loves Trump, but because Trump is a burning disaster.

Suggestion Box

If Vlad wanted to perform some genuine what-about-ism, he could have chosen much better subjects. Now, I’m sure he has no sympathy for Reality Winner – who was recently released from prison – because she exposed some intelligence on Russia’s influence campaign in the 2016 Presidential election. But he might have gone with Edward Snowden, who after all, is relatively close at hand (in exile in Russia).

Probably a better pick would have been Julian Assange, who is now serving hard time in London and under indictment by the U.S. Justice Department and whose health is rapidly deteriorating. Assange’s “crime” was the release of the Iraq war documents, diplomatic cables, and collateral murder video, for which they’ve been hounding him non-stop for over a decade, through administrations of both parties (see my older posts on this). They are slowly killing Assange, in essence. That’s roughly equivalent to the Navalny accusation.

Of course, Putin could also point to, I don’t know, millions of other incarcerated Americans. Or perhaps the text of our 13th Amendment. The man just has no imagination!

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

The Picks.

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This is the first week there was a general acknowledgement that Joe Biden is president-elect of the United States, and like a dam breaking, the news cycle was flooded with announcements of his cabinet picks. In a cleverly stage-designed event, Biden appeared with Harris and the beginnings of his “national security” team, inclusive of foreign policy. His nominee for Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, caused some serious crowing of approval on Morning Joe with the story of his Holocaust survivor uncle, who escaped from a Nazi death march and ran across an American tank, from which emerged an African-American soldier. “This is who we are,” Blinken said, referring to the image of America as a liberator and a light unto the darkness of a troubled world yearning to breathe free.

What Blinken’s story didn’t include was an acknowledgement that, in all likelihood, the Black soldier was part of a segregated unit, as mixed race units were barred in the U.S. military throughout World War II. That is who we are, too. But that part of American exceptionalism isn’t likely to find its way onto the set of Morning Joe anytime soon, aside from the contributions of Eddie Glaude and a handful of others. And so, while the largely bipartisan imperial consensus experiences a moment of bliss at the re-establishment of its place at the helm of U.S. foreign policy, the manifold failures of this longstanding policy set will fade into the background for hopefully a brief spell. (We’re fortunate to have Rho Khanna and others to jog our memories this time around.)

Let me be clear – I am overjoyed that Trump and his crew of warmongers will be leaving Washington in a couple of months. I think Biden’s administration will be an improvement in many respects. But to say that they will be better than the Trump team is not to say that we are embarking on a new era of enlightenment in American foreign policy. Michele Flournoy, for instance, appears to be edging closer to being appointed Defense Secretary (as attested to by Politico, of course). She was four-square in favor of the Afghanistan surge policy, supported the wars in Iraq and Libya, has worked extensively in the for-profit military consulting and lobbying world, and is poised to place China in the crosshairs of the U.S. “defense” posture in the years ahead – a direction The New York Times appears to be signalling ahead of the incoming Biden administration. (Yes, they’re mostly just reporting on what Biden’s advisors have been saying, but they’ve been drinking the Kool Aid on this for a long time.)

I prefer to remain optimistic about our future – that there are enough countervailing forces now on the left to prevent another Iraq-like catastrophe. But doing so will require constant vigilance on the part of my fellow leftists. No time for sleep, my friends.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
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The last war.

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On various occasions over the past week or two I’ve felt like I was tele-transported back into the mid-twentieth century. It started with MSNBC host Chris Mathews during a broadcast in New Hampshire spouting some crazy-ass rant about revolutionaries from Castro’s Cuba executing him in Central Park as American leftists – including Bernie Sanders – looked on approvingly. He later went full retrograde pundit, comparing Sanders’ victory in Nevada to the Nazis overrunning French defenses at the start of World War II. Then, this past week, Bernie Sanders’s comments about literacy programs in Cuba somehow became a central issue in the Democratic primary campaign, hoisted high by the “liberal” cable outlet MSNBC as evidence of Bernie’s unelectability and nefarious socialistic tendencies. The crew on Morning Joe jokingly addressed one another as “comrade”, jumping up and down on Sanders for being a Castro apologists, then – practically in the same breath – remembered the late dictator Hosni Mubarak as a source of stability in a troubled region. Can’t. make. it. up.

Sees commies everywhere. Still.

Now mind you, it isn’t like the MSNBC crew (and others) needed to resort to fighting the last war to properly bash Bernie. Their hair was on fire in the wake of Nevada particularly, and they are using what influence they have to trip him up in South Carolina, where their peculiar favorite Biden is favored to win. But resort they did, and in so doing, they (with some notable exceptions) revealed just how steeped in right-wing historical narratives their correspondents remain. I expect nothing better from Scarborough, a former right-wing congressman from Florida, but frankly one would hope that more than a handful of these journalists might acknowledge the neo-colonial relationship we’ve had with Caribbean and Central American nations over the past Century.

Comparing Cuba with the United States is a meaningless exercise. The former is a small, poor, underdeveloped country; the latter, a global superpower and the richest nation on Earth. A more apt comparison would be between Cuba and Guatemala or El Salvador, as these examples are also poor and underdeveloped, but remained in the U.S. sphere of influence, unlike Cuba post 1959. Compare literacy rates, the availability of health care, and other social goods, and trust me, Cuba is head and shoulders above the other two for the vast majority of their respective populations, despite Cuba having endured a crushing U.S. embargo (in addition to all-out terror) since its revolution sixty years ago. It’s also worth remembering that Cuba stood firmly on the side of Angola and the ANC throughout the 1970s and 1980s, when we were actively supporting apartheid South Africa. That’s why Raul Castro was honored so lavishly at Nelson Mandela’s funeral – they, more than any other nation, brought about the end of apartheid, and it cost them dearly.

I think Majority Report’s Michael Brooks had it right on Wednesday when he said that, given Cuba’s status as a cash-starved country under sustained attack for six decades, we could be excused for not obsessing over its authoritarian tendencies when we’re perpetually giving a nearly free pass to powerful, massively abusive authoritarian countries like China (as Bloomberg and CBS debate moderators did this past Tuesday).

luv u,

jp