Day: August 1, 2016

Americans Are Fuzzy on History

My lucky regulars know that I am a bit of a nut on the history thing…..that I seem to always find some sort of historical perspective for many of my posts.

I believe that we all need to know our history and then maybe we could stop making the same goddamn mistakes over and over…..we should know it all…the good, the bad and the ugly……

America needs to lift that veil of ignorance and step into a brighter future…..

The nation’s observed birthday – July 4th – always brings forth what passes for modern day “patriotism”: prominent displays of the flag everywhere, celebration of the military, picnics, backyard barbecues, and of course fireworks. There is even an occasional tribute to the nation’s “founders,” those men who supposedly signed the Declaration of Independence on that date, and the genius of Thomas Jefferson who purportedly masterminded and wrote the document. Yet Americans, although a great people, are usually vacant on their history, and many really admit it, because history seems a like a dusty little hobby that is irrelevant to the “here and now,” which self-help gurus on TV tell us we need to focus on. However, comparatively, people in other countries usually pay more attention to their own history and those of at least their region of the world.

Because many people in the United States don’t value history very much, they tend to allow politicians to be selective in their remembering of historical events – usually to manipulate public nationalism (which now passes for patriotism) for their own dubious policy goals. For example, if Americans had focused more on the fact that historically, the Vietnamese had been fighting fiercely over the centuries to throw out foreign invaders – such as the Japanese, the Chinese, and recently the French – perhaps they would have demanded that their politicians think twice, even three times, about invading that country. And if Americans had known that the historically fractious Iraq, an artificial country that had been created by the greedy colonial powers after World War I to exploit the country’s oil reserves, they might have wisely rejected George W. Bush’s attempt at military social work in one of the most unlikely places in the Middle East for democracy to flourish.

Source: At Their Own Peril, Americans Are Fuzzy on History – Antiwar.com Original by — Antiwar.com

The complete lack of knowledge of history makes for a country that cannot make a good decision no matter how hard they try.  Sadly this fuzziness is by design…..it is a propaganda tool…….the news and any media outlet that pretends to give history when they give only one side of an issue…..

The perfect tool for education especially in history is the “Boob tube”…..but instead of a teaching moment we get programming on modern day “dumpster divers” or gear heads or worse….stupid reality garbage…..so yeah Americans are fuzzy on history……. most have NO other choice.

Neocons Come A Calling

2016 has been an unusual election in oh so many ways…..we had the huckster Trump winning the GOP nomination…..we had an old Jewish candidate that energized the young….we had our first woman that won her nomination…candidates in a Twitter war….more email scandals than we needed….all in all a very strange election process indeed.

I believe that this election will come down to the foreign policy the voter thinks is best for this country…..and because of that the Neocons, war hawks if you will, are evacuating from the GOP and lining up behind a Dem…that is right the neocons are supporting Hillary Clinton….(how strange is that?)

As Hillary Clinton puts together what she hopes will be a winning coalition in November, many progressives remain wary — but she has the war-hawks firmly behind her.

“I would say all Republican foreign policy professionals are anti-Trump,” leading neoconservative Robert Kagan told a group gathered around him, groupie-style, at a “foreign policy professionals for Hillary” fundraiser I attended last week. “I would say that a majority of people in my circle will vote for Hillary.”

As the co-founder of the neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century, Kagan played a leading role in pushing for America’s unilateral invasion of Iraq, and insisted for years afterwards that it had turned out great.

Source: Robert Kagan and Other Neocons Are Backing Hillary Clinton

As an old hippie anti-war protester and now an anti-war writer I find this totally bizarre that a Dem, a Blue Dog Dem, can gain the support of so many neocons during the election process…..

How can this be happening?  Is it something in the water?

“Americans aren’t just electing a President in November,” Clinton told a crowd of supporters and military personnel in San Diego in early June. “We’re choosing our next commander-in-chief—the person we count on to decide questions of war and peace, life and death.”

This was Clinton’s first direct and sustained attack on Trump, and though Democrats had been preoccupied with the unsavory identity politics of the presumptive Republican nominee, Clinton devoted only a few lines to calling out Trump’s habits of “demonizing Muslims” and insulting women, Mexicans, and the disabled. Most of her speech went after Trump’s utterances on foreign policy. “Like many across our country and around the world, I believe the person the Republicans have nominated for President cannot do the job,” she said. “Donald Trump’s ideas aren’t just different—they are dangerously incoherent. They’re not even really ideas—just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies.”

Source: Hillary Clinton’s Dangerously Coherent Foreign Policy – Reason.com

Is this a dream?  Or maybe someone is smoking a mixture that should be made illegal?  I’m confused.

A Conservative Take On Terrorism

In doing my research for a terrorism class I look at many different opinions…I like a balanced look at major issues of our day…..and this one comes from an unlikely source (at least for me).

I have been a bleeding heart (derogatory term used by some mental midgets) most of my life…..I always fought for liberal issues in any way that I felt would help….seldom did I appreciate anything a conservative had to say….that is until the big wasteland that the ultra-Right turned the political landscape into…..conservative thought (as it was) ceased to exist and was replace with the tacky thinking of neoliberalism (if you do not know the difference then f*cking look it up).

I have been encouraged lately that the conservatives may yet prove to be a real force in our political system…I have even taken to read sources like The American Conservative…..I admit that there is much that I do not agree with but they actually have thinking people writing for them not the mindless drones that regurgitate crap from Talk Radio.

Take the subject of Terrorism….It is a subject that makes me want to scream and throw a brick at the idiots that pretend to be “experts”…….I have read a couple of good articles on the subject published in TAC…….(no bricks were thrown)

The murderous attack earlier this month in Nice, France, prompted Jay Nordlinger, senior editor at the ostensibly conservative National Review, to propose a new approach to dealing with terrorism. His strategy is simplicity itself: “you have to kill these jihadists, and kill them, and kill them, until they simply tire of being killed and leave civilization alone.”

If by “civilization” Nordlinger is referring to Europe and the United States, then his proposal comes a couple of centuries too late. In their relations with the non-West—the peoples of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East—Western powers have rarely demonstrated a desire to be left alone. They have instead sought to subjugate and exploit populations classified as inferior. In pursuit of their objectives, they have relied not on suasion but on violence and intimidation.

Source: Kill All the Terrorists? | The American Conservative

That is the only answer to an ever growing problem in the world…..KILL THEM ALL.

The problem is it is oversimplified response to the horrendous attacks….and then there is the chance that the whole phenom is overestimated……

As the investigation of the massacre in Nice continues, authorities continue to find no evidence that killer Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel had any ties to terrorist networks. So why have so many so quick to invoke ISIS? And more importantly, why do so many continue to conflate “ordered or planned by ISIS” with “ISIS-inspired”?

For all the speculation of real connections—and ISIS’ own attempt to claim “credit”—the evidence has pointed the other way from the start. Compare the awful expertise and professionalism shown by the ISIS killers in Paris the night of November 17 with Bouhlel’s awful wild ride. The Paris attack involved three coordinated attacks, suicide belts, shooting prowess, and slipping past security guards. In Nice, the perpetrator simply rented the biggest truck he could a couple of days beforehand and cased the location. Bouhlel didn’t even wear easily obtainable body armor that might have allowed him to kill far more people before being shot himself. The reports of the truck being packed with weapons including grenades proved false, although he did have one working gun.

Source: Don’t Overstate the Terrorist Threat | The American Conservative

What point does it make to thump the chest and demand the impossible?

The American Conservative makes some valid points…..it is an education if one decides to read and understand.

“Most Progressive Dem Platform in History”

I do hope everyone had a good weekend….I know I did….but it is Monday….let’s get to work!

That is the spin that the Dem hawks want the voter to believe…..there is nothing “progressive” about the Dem platform…..if anything it fits well with the neoliberal bullsh*t that Clinton is selling with her campaign….

The Democratic Party platform may indeed be, as some have proclaimed, the “most progressive” in the history of the party—at least on various important domestic issues. But some of its foreign policy planks reflect a disturbingly hawkish worldview consistent with those of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Declaring that “we must defeat ISIS, al-Qaeda and their affiliates,” the platform calls for the United States and its allies to “destroy ISIS” strongholds in Iraq and Syria. There is no acknowledgement that these strongholds are in heavily populated urban areas, thereby risking large-scale civilian casualties, and no mention that the rise of these extremist organizations are a direct consequence of previous U.S. military interventions in the region.

Source: “Most Progressive Dem Platform in History” Hawkish on Foreign Policy | The Progressive

Please take some time and learn what the Hell you are voting for….that really is not that much to ask….but only if you want to make an accurate vote…..after seeing the crop of candidates this time around….I am skeptical.

Hillary Clinton’s nominating convention has focused on domestic issues, but her foreign policy has many anti-war Democrats worried, as she surrounds herself with neocons and liberal hawks, writes James W Carden from Philadelphia.

The Democratic convention leaves one with an uneasy sense of déjà vu about the potential foreign policy direction of a second Clinton presidency. We’ve seen this movie before and we know how it turns out: badly.

The mood among some of the Democratic Party’s foreign policy cognoscenti here is one of an unadulterated smugness bred of certainty mixed with a sense of global entitlement. One Democratic U.S. senator lamented to a roomful of well-heeled donors and foreign policy experts on Monday that the U.S. had “lost” Ukraine. Lost? Was it ever America’s to begin with?

Source: The Fear of Hillary’s Foreign Policy – Consortiumnews

Congrats people…..you are about to make the biggest mistake of your little life…..