Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Uncommon Courage



“We were bullies in one of the poorest countries on Earth,” Rapone said. “We have one of the most technologically advanced militaries of all time and all we were doing is brutalizing and invading and terrorizing a population that had nothing to do with what the United States claimed was a threat.”

THANK YOU SPENSER RAPONE FOR TELLING IT LIKE IT IS!

Thursday, June 14, 2018

Eid Mubarak!



The American Anti-Imperialist League



The American Anti-Imperialist League was founded on June 15, 1898 and included among its members Mark Twain, William and Henry James, John Dewey, and Andrew Carnegie. Bring it back.

Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Read The Classics



First published in the fateful year 1980--the year of Ronald Reagan's election, the Year of No Return--and re-issued in 2007 with an Introduction by Andrew Bacevich, William Appleman Williams's now classic Empire As A Way Of Life chronicles the dark heart of the American Dream: the imperial ideology that sustains and rationalizes the lethal cocktail of predatory capitalism and apocalyptic Messianism (of the Christian and Nationalistic varieties) that now strut brazenly upon the stage of American politics and are preached as gospel from American pulpits. Anyone who is still mystified how someone like Donald Trump came to occupy the Oval Office should read this book.

Sunday, June 3, 2018

Read The Classics



But don't stop there...

Cyberspace



Cyberspace is where the militarized corporatocracy that runs most of the world's so-called democracies allows the little people like you and me to dump our indignation at their criminality. They let us do that because it's safe there.

It is "safe" in the sense that it serves as a kind of safety valve. We can exercise our First Amendment rights on social media, blogs, internet petitions, etc. and feel as if we've actually "done something" about the issues that matter to us. But frankly, most of what we really accomplish is letting off steam...

In a now classic study, The Crossroads of Liberalism (pub. 1960), Charles Forcey traced the careers of three early 20th century "Progressive" intellectuals and "opinion makers": Croly, Weyl, and Lippmann (all associated with the New Republic magazine). Towards the end of the book (p. 275), Forcey notes that while these men had strong ties to the Wilson Administration and "spoke for the ideals and interests of the great liberal middle class, that class no longer had much power in a world ruled by the hard and secret decisions of admirals and generals, diplomats and heads of state." That was the situation a century ago; it has not improved since then...

What has improved is the ability of the State security apparatus to surveil us. I doubt, however, that they care much about what we think or say so long as it remains in cyberspace. They know, on the one hand, that talk is cheap. On the other hand, they are locked and loaded and ready to rumble if any one of us were to get the idea to act on our perfectly justified outrage. In 2018, they have us right where they want us.