Day: September 15, 2021

Closing Thought–15Sep21

For decades the GOP has had two idols….Reagan and Lincoln…..but all that has apparently changed. It appears the Abe Lincoln is losing some of his luster among those that pray at the altar of Trump….

With all the hoopla around the removal of statues that celebrate the Traitorous generals of the Confederacy it seems that some are now turning on Lincoln in retaliation for the removals….

This week, the statue of General Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia — one of the largest standing monuments to the Confederacy — was taken down from Monument Avenue, a major victory for activists who have long sought to remove white supremacist symbols in the public square.

Republican Missouri state Rep. Tony Lovasco tweeted that people should be “fair and balanced” about “tearing down statues of reprehensible people” — and accompanied this with a picture of the Lincoln Memorial.

Lovasco did not clarify why he considered the father of the Republican Party — and the president widely credited with saving America from the Civil War and bringing about the end of slavery — to be “reprehensible,” but doubled down in a follow-up tweet, insisting he didn’t support the Confederacy either.

https://www.rawstory.com/robert-e-lee-statue/

Has some in the GOP driven so far up Trump’s ass that they will ignore the founder of the Republican Party?

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

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A Word Of Warning

Unfortunately we live in a country and a world that seems to be in constant chaos…..politically, climate, socially….everything seems to be in flux.

We have been warned for many years of most of the problems we have today but as usual we are too damn arrogant to listen the the predictions…..

There is no more warning that we need to hear and hopefully understand….

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has issued a dire warning that the world is moving in the wrong direction and faces “a pivotal moment” where continuing business as usual could lead to a breakdown of global order and a future of perpetual crisis. Changing course could signal a breakthrough to a greener and safer future, he said. The UN chief said the world’s nations and people must reverse today’s dangerous trends and choose “the breakthrough scenario,” the AP reports. The world is under “enormous stress” on almost every front, he said, and the pandemic was a wake-up call demonstrating the failure of nations to come together and take joint decisions to help all people in the face of a global life-threatening emergency.

Guterres said this paralysis extends far beyond COVID-19 to the failures to tackle the climate crisis and “our suicidal war on nature and the collapse of biodiversity,” the inequality undermining the cohesion of societies, and technology’s advances “without guardrails to protect us from its unforeseen consequences.” In other signs of a more chaotic and insecure world, he pointed to rising poverty, hunger, and gender inequality after decades of decline, the extreme risk to human life and the planet from nuclear war and a climate breakdown, and the inequality, discrimination, and injustice bringing people into the streets to protest “while conspiracy theories and lies fuel deep divisions within societies.”

In a horizon-scanning report presented to the General Assembly and at a press conference Friday, Guterres said his vision for the “breakthrough scenario” to a greener and safer world is driven by “the principle of working together, recognizing that we are bound to each other and that no community or country, however powerful, can solve its challenges alone.” The report—”Our Common Agenda”—is a response to last year’s declaration by world leaders on the 75th anniversary of the United Nations and the request from the assembly’s 193 member nations for the UN chief to make recommendations to address the challenges for global governance. In today’s world, Guterres said, “Global decision-making is fixed on immediate gain, ignoring the long-term consequences of decisions—or indecision.”

Something we should be concerned about….but instead we spend all our energy on mundane wedge issues….and all the while the world slips further down the rabbit hole.

So sad!  So pathetic!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Please, Return Sanity To Foreign Policy

The problem with our foreign policy is that the government is no longer in charge of directing the direction….

“Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business,” Goldberg wrote, quoting Ledeen.

Those like Ledeen, the neoconservative intellectual henchman type, often get away with this kind of provocative rhetoric for various reasons. American intelligentsias, especially those who are close to the center of power in Washington DC, perceive war and military intervention as the foundation and baseline of their foreign policy analysis. The utterances of such statements are usually conveyed within friendly media and intellectual platforms, where equally hawkish, belligerent audiences cheer and laugh at the war-mongering muses. In the case of Ledeen, the receptive audience was the hardline, neoconservative, pro-Israel American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

Predictably, AEI was one of the loudest voices urging for a war and invasion of Iraq prior to that calamitous decision by the George W. Bush Administration, which was enacted in March 2003.

US Foreign Policy Adrift: Why Washington is No Longer Calling the Shots

For too long the US has pursued a policy on the international stage of intervention….diplomacy has taken a back seat to the use of force thanks to the influence of the war industry on our foreign policy…..time for that to change….time to return to the days where diplomacy was the first reaction and not the use of extreme force.

The group Win Without War has some fine points that would go about returning sanity to our foreign policy….

. Our foreign policy is intimately interlinked with our domestic policy, so we must apply our shared values to the United States’ engagement abroad just as we do at home. The militarization of our foreign policy is intertwined with the militarization of our own society, whether in policing, incarceration and deportation, mass surveillance, or the rise of hateful ideologies like anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and racism. At home and abroad, we must commit to advance policies of liberation and work to dismantle policies that subjugate Black, brown, and other disenfranchised communities. Our foreign policy must fulfill the same values of human rights, justice, and self-determination we seek at home by reinforcing intersectional grassroots movements to win real change.

People in the United States have the right to personal safety – as do peoples all around the globe. Endless wars, the empowerment of autocrats and human rights abusers, and the pursuit of the interests of the few at the expense of the many will not keep us safe. The United States’ safety depends on building security for all people around the world, not simply on the might of our military. Only by helping to make others secure will we ourselves become more secure.

. For too long we have applied the use of military force to a variety of security challenges that do not have military solutions, with disastrous results. Most security challenges do not have a military solution, nor does every security challenge present an existential threat to the United States. We believe that the U.S. must reorient its national security framework to be based on conflict prevention, locally-led development, democratic governance reform, accountability, and peacebuilding, and avoid policies that foment more conflict.

Principles of a Progressive Foreign Policy for the United States

I find their approach is something I can support…..and in 2024 I will be looking for a candidate that embraces a more sane foreign policy.

It maybe is just wishful thinking for as long as money and donations drive the politics in this country I will once again not vote for a winner.

But once again I can say that while I voted for a loser I have not compromised my principles that I have held for 50 years.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”