A Good Deed From the Wicked Witch? Actually Ending the War in Afghanistan
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=27509"><span class="small">Andrew J. Bacevich, TomDispatch</span></a>
Tuesday, 24 November 2020 13:26
Bacevich writes: "Within establishment circles, Donald Trump's failure to win re-election has prompted merry singing and bell-ringing galore. If you read the New York Times or watch MSNBC, the song featured in the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz nicely captures the mood of the moment."
Konar Province, 2010. (photo: Moises Saman/Magnum Photos)
A Good Deed From the Wicked Witch? Actually Ending the War in Afghanistan
By Andrew J. Bacevich, TomDispatch
24 November 20
There’s a history still to be written of how key officials in the Trump administration and the Pentagon stiffed the commander-in-chief when it came to America’s forever wars. How, for instance, did the generals with whom Donald Trump initially surrounded himself convince the man who had, in part, won the presidency by campaigning to end America’s post-9/11 “endless” wars to significantly increase the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2017? We don’t know. All we really know is that he shouldn’t then have been calling Secretary of Defense Jim “Mad Dog” Mattis, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, and Secretary of Homeland Security and later White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, “my generals” (as he also then spoke of “my military”). They should instead have been referring to him as “our president.”
As the Trump presidency ends with the commander-in-chief finally cutting the number of troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia (but not withdrawing them all), a story remains to be told. On his recent retirement, for instance, Jim Jeffrey, the State Department’s special representative for Syria engagement, offered a revelation. When the president finally began acting to “end” America’s forever wars in December 2018 by demanding that U.S. troops be withdrawn from Syria -- Secretary of Defense Mattis would resign over that order -- he was convinced to leave behind a relatively small number of them, 200, as the withdrawal proceeded. Or so the president came to believe at least (and so it was reported at the time). But Jeffrey now informs us that “there was never a Syria withdrawal” at all. The full contingent of perhaps 900 American troops evidently remains there to this day. The president’s top officials simply lied to him (and assumedly the media) on the subject. As Jeffrey put it, “We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there.”
Now, almost 19 years after the post-9/11 American invasion of Afghanistan, partial withdrawals are reportedly soon to be underway in that country, Iraq, and Somalia (even as the president has evidently been contemplating a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities). TomDispatch regular Andrew Bacevich, author most recently of The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory, focuses on their significance today. But to anyone who watched retired Army Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster attack the president’s Afghan withdrawal plan on the PBS NewsHour the other night, claiming Trump had “partnered with the Taliban against the Afghan government,” you do have to wonder just how efficiently those partial withdrawals will be carried out by "his" military before Joe Biden assumedly enters the Oval Office on January 20th and then, of course, who knows what will happen? Tom
-Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch
Let's open up and sing, and ring the bells out
Ding-dong! the merry-oh sing it high, sing it low
Let them know the wicked witch is dead!
A Good Deed from the Wicked Witch? Actually Ending the War in Afghanistan
ithin establishment circles, Donald Trump’s failure to win re-election has prompted merry singing and bell-ringing galore. If you read the New York Times or watch MSNBC, the song featured in the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz nicely captures the mood of the moment.
As a consequence, expectations for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to put America back on the path to the Emerald City after a dispiriting four-year detour are sky high. The new administration will defeat Covid-19, restore prosperity, vanquish racism, reform education, expand healthcare coverage, tackle climate change, and provide an effective and humane solution to the problem of undocumented migrants. Oh, and Biden will also return the United States to its accustomed position of global leadership. And save America’s soul to boot.
So we are told.
That these expectations are deemed even faintly credible qualifies as passing strange. After all, the outcome of the 2020 presidential election turned less on competing approaches to governance than on the character of the incumbent. It wasn’t Joe Biden as principled standard-bearer of enlightened twenty-first-century liberalism who prevailed. It was Joe Biden, a retread centrist pol who emerged as the last line of defense shielding America and the world from four more years of Donald Trump.
So the balloting definitively resolved only a single question: by 80 million to 74 million votes, a margin of six million, Americans signaled their desire to terminate Trump’s lease on the White House. Yet even if repudiating the president, voters hardly repudiated Trumpism. Republicans actually gained seats in the House of Representatives and appear likely to retain control of the Senate.
On November 3rd, a twofold transfer of power commenced. A rapt public has fixed its attention on the first of those transfers: Biden’s succession to the presidency (and Trump’s desperate resistance to the inevitable outcome). But a second, hardly less important transfer of power is also occurring. Once it became clear that Trump was not going to win a second term, control of the Republican Party began reverting from the president to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The implications of that shift are immense, as Biden, himself a longtime member of the Senate, no doubt appreciates.
Consider this telling anecdote from former President Barack Obama’s just published memoir. Obama had tasked then-Vice President Biden with cajoling McConnell into supporting a piece of legislation favored by the administration. After Biden made his pitch, the hyper-partisan McConnell dourly replied, “You must be under the mistaken impression that I care.” End of negotiation.
Perhaps the Democrats will miraculously win both Senate seats in Georgia’s January runoff elections and so consign McConnell to the status of minority leader. If they don’t, let us not labor under the mistaken impression that he’ll support Biden’s efforts to defeat Covid-19, restore prosperity, vanquish racism, reform education, expand healthcare coverage, tackle climate change, or provide an effective and humane solution to the problem of undocumented migrants.
It’s a given that McConnell isn’t any more interested in saving souls than he is in passing legislation favored by Democrats. That leaves restoring American global leadership as the sole remaining arena where President Biden might elicit from a McConnell-controlled GOP something other than unremitting obstructionism.
And that, in turn, brings us face to face with the issue Democrats and Republicans alike would prefer to ignore: the U.S. penchant for war. Since the end of the Cold War and especially since the terror attacks of 9/11, successive administrations have relied on armed force to assert, affirm, or at least shore up America’s claim to global leadership. The results have not been pretty. A series of needless and badly mismanaged wars have contributed appreciably -- more even than Donald Trump’s zany ineptitude -- to the growing perception that the United States is now a declining power. That perception is not without validity. Over the past two decades, wars have depleted America’s strength and undermined its global influence.
So, as the U.S. embarks on the post-Trump era, what are the prospects that a deeply divided government presiding over a deeply divided polity will come to a more reasoned and prudent attitude toward war? A lot hinges on whether Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell can agree on an answer to that question.
An Unexpected Gift for “Sleepy Joe”
As his inevitable exit from the White House approaches, President Trump himself may be forcing the issue.
One of the distinctive attributes of our 45th president is that he never seemed terribly interested in actually tending to the duties of his office. He does not, in fact, possess a work ethic in any traditional sense. He prefers to swagger and strut rather than deliberate and decide. Once it became clear that he wasn’t going to win a second term, he visibly gave up even the pretense of governing. Today, he golfs, tweets, and rails. According to news reports, he no longer even bothers to set aside time for the daily presidential intelligence briefing.
As the clock runs out, however, certain Trumpian impulses remain in play. The war in Afghanistan, now in its 19th year, offers a notable example. In 2001, President George W. Bush ordered U.S. forces to invade the country, but prematurely turned his attention to a bigger and more disastrous misadventure in Iraq. Barack Obama inherited the Afghanistan War, promised to win it, and ordered a large-scale surge in the U.S. troop presence there. Yet the conflict stubbornly dragged on through his two terms. As for candidate Trump, during campaign 2016, he vowed to end it once and for all. In office, however, he never managed to pull the plug -- until now, that is.
Soon after losing the election, the president ousted several senior Pentagon civilians, including Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, and replaced them (for a couple of months anyway) with loyalists sharing his oft-stated commitment to “ending endless wars.” Within days of taking office, new Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller issued a letter to the troops, signaling his own commitment to that task.
“We are not a people of perpetual war,” he wrote, describing endless war as “the antithesis of everything for which we stand and for which our ancestors fought.” The time for accepting the inevitable had now arrived. “All wars must end,” he continued, adding that trying harder was not going to produce a better outcome. “We gave it our all,” he concluded. “Now, it's time to come home.”
Miller avoided using terms like victory or defeat, success or failure, and did not specify an actual timetable for a full-scale withdrawal. Yet Trump had already made his intentions clear: he wanted all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by the end of the year and preferably by Christmas. Having forgotten or punted on innumerable other promises, Trump appeared determined to make good on this one. It’s likely, in fact, that Miller’s primary -- perhaps only -- charge during his abbreviated tour of duty as Pentagon chief is to enable Trump to claim success in terminating at least one war.
So during this peculiar betwixt-and-between moment of ours, with one administration packing its bags and the next one trying to get its bearings, a question of immense significance to the future course of American statecraft presents itself: Will the United States at long last ring down the curtain on the most endless of its endless wars? Or, under the guise of seeking a “responsible end,” will it pursue the irresponsible course of prolonging a demonstrably futile enterprise through another presidency?
As Miller will soon discover, if he hasn’t already, his generals don’t concur with the commander-in-chief’s determination to “come home.” Whether in Afghanistan or Somalia, Iraq, Syria, or Europe, they have demonstrated great skill in foiling his occasional gestures aimed at reducing the U.S. military’s overseas profile.
The available evidence suggests that Joe Biden’s views align with those of the generals. True, the conduct and legacy of recent wars played next to no role in deciding the outcome of the 2020 presidential election (suggesting that many Americans have made their peace with endless war). Still, given expectations that anyone aspiring to high office these days must stake out a position on every conceivable issue and promise something for everyone, candidate Biden spelled out his intentions regarding Afghanistan.
Basically, he wants to have it both ways. So he is on record insisting that “these ‘forever wars’ have to end,” while simultaneously proposing to maintain a contingent of American troops in Afghanistan to “take out terrorist groups who are going to continue to emerge.” In other words, Biden proposes to declare that the longest war in U.S. history has ended, while simultaneously underwriting its perpetuation.
Such a prospect will find favor with the generals, members of the foreign policy establishment, and media hawks. Yet hanging on in Afghanistan (or other active theaters of war) will contribute nothing to Biden’s larger promise to “build back better.” Indeed, the staggering expenses that accompany protracted wars will undermine his prospects of making good on his domestic reform agenda. It’s the dilemma that Lyndon Johnson faced in the mid-1960s: You can have your Great Society, Mr. President, or you can have your war in Vietnam, but you can’t have both.
Biden will face an analogous problem. Put simply, his stated position on Afghanistan is at odds with the larger aspirations of his presidency.
At Long Last an Exit Strategy?
As a practical matter, the odds of Trump actually ending the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan between now and his departure from office are nil. The logistical challenges are daunting, especially given that the pick-up team now running the Pentagon is made up of something other than all-stars. And the generals will surely drag their feet, while mobilizing allies not just in the punditocracy but in the Republican Party itself.
As a practical matter, Acting Secretary Miller has already bowed to reality. The definition of success now is, it seems, to cut the force there roughly in half, from 4,500 to 2,500, by Inauguration Day, with the remainder of U.S. troops supposedly coming out of Afghanistan by May 2021 (months after both Trump and Miller will be out of a job).
So call it Operation Half a Loaf. But half is better than none. Even if Trump won’t succeed in reducing U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan to zero, I’m rooting for him anyway. As, indeed, Joe Biden should be -- because if Trump makes headway in shutting down America’s war there, Biden will be among the principal beneficiaries.
Whatever his actual motives, Trump has cracked open a previously shut door to an exit strategy. Through that door lies the opportunity of turning the page on a disastrous era of American statecraft dominated by a misplaced obsession with events in the Greater Middle East.
Twin convictions shaped basic U.S. policy during this period: the first was that the United States has vital interests at stake in this region, even in utterly remote parts of it like Afghanistan; the second, that the United States can best advance those interests by amassing and employing military power. The first of those convictions turned out to be wildly misplaced, the second tragically wrong-headed. Yet pursuant to those very mistaken beliefs, successive administrations have flung away lives, treasure, and influence with complete abandon. The American people have gained less than nothing in return. In fact, in terms of where taxpayer dollars were invested, they’ve lost their shirts.
Acting Secretary Miller’s charge to the troops plainly acknowledges a bitter truth to which too few members of the Washington establishment have been willing to admit: the time to move on from this misguided project is now. To the extent that Donald Trump’s lame-duck administration begins the process of extricating the United States from Afghanistan, he will demonstrate the feasibility of doing so elsewhere as well. Tired arguments for staying the course could then lose their persuasive power.
Doubtless, after all these disastrous years, there will be negative consequences to leaving Afghanistan. Ill-considered and mismanaged wars inevitably yield poisonous fruit. There will be further bills to pay. Still, ending the U.S. war there will establish a precedent for ending our military involvement in Iraq, Syria, and Somalia as well. Terminating direct U.S. military involvement across the Greater Middle East and much of Africa will create an opportunity to reconfigure U.S. policy in a world that has changed dramatically since the United States recklessly embarked upon its crusade to transform great swathes of the Islamic world.
Biden himself should welcome such an opportunity. Admittedly, Mitch McConnell, no longer fully subservient to President Trump, predicts that withdrawing from Afghanistan will produce an outcome “reminiscent of the humiliating American departure from Saigon in 1975.” In reality, of course, failure in Vietnam stemmed not from the decision to leave, but from an erroneous conviction that it was incumbent upon Americans to decide the destiny of the Vietnamese people. The big mistake occurred not in 1975 when American troops finally departed, but a decade earlier when President Johnson decided that it was incumbent upon the United States to Americanize the war.
As Americans learned in Vietnam, the only way to end a war gone wrong is to leave the field of battle. If that describes Trump’s intentions in Afghanistan, then we may finally have some reason to be grateful for his service to our nation. With time, Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell might even come to see the wisdom of doing so.
And then, of course, they can bicker about the shortest path to the Emerald City.
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=51635"><span class="small">Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog</span></a>
Tuesday, 24 November 2020 09:56
Reich writes: "Financial regulators subject banks to stress tests to see if they have enough capital to withstand sharp downturns."
Robert Reich. (photo: Getty Images)
Profiles in Cowardice
By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
24 November 20
inancial regulators subject banks to stress tests to see if they have enough capital to withstand sharp downturns.
Now America is being subject to a stress test to see if it has enough strength to withstand Trump’s treacherous campaign to discredit the 2020 presidential election.
Trump will lose because there’s no evidence of fraud. But the integrity of thousands of people responsible for maintaining American democracy is being tested as never before.
Tragically, most elected Republicans in Washington are failing the test by refusing to stand up to Trump. Their cowardice is one of the worst betrayals of public trust in the history of our republic.
The only dissenting notes are coming from Republicans who are retiring at the end of the year or don’t have to face voters for several years, such as Senators Mitt Romney of Utah and Ben Sasse of Nebraska.
Silent Republicans worry that speaking out could invite a primary challenge. But democracy depends on moral courage. These Republicans are profiles in cowardice.
But I’ve got some good news. The vast majority of lower-level Republican office-holders are passing the stress test, many with distinction.
Take for example Chris Krebs, who led the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency and last Tuesday refuted Trump’s claims of election fraud – saying the claims “have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.”
Trump fired Krebs that afternoon. Krebs’s response: “Honored to serve. We did it right.”
Or Brad Raffensperger – Georgia’s Republican secretary of state who oversaw the election there and describes himself as “a Republican through and through and never voted for a Democrat.” Raffensperger is defending Georgia’s vote for Biden, rejecting Trump’s accusations of fraud. On Friday he certified that Biden won the state’s presidential vote.
Raffensperger spurned overtures from Trump quisling Lindsey Graham, who asked if Raffensperger could toss out all mail-in votes from counties with high rates of questionable signatures. And Raffensperger dismissed demands from Georgia’s two incumbent Republican senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue (both facing tougher-than-anticipated runoffs) that he resign.
“This office runs on integrity,” Raffensperger says, “and that’s what voters want to know, that this person’s going to do his job.”
Raffensperger has received death threats from Republican voters inflamed by Trump’s allegations. He’s not the only one. Election officials in Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Arizona are also reporting threats. But they’re not giving in to them.
While we’re at it, let’s not forget all the other public officials in the Trump administration who have been stress-tested and passed honorably.
I’m referring to public health officials unwilling to lie about Covid-19, military leaders unwilling to back Trump’s attacks on Black Lives Matter protesters, inspectors general unwilling to cover up Trump corruption, U.S. foreign service officers unwilling to lie about Trump’s overtures to Ukraine, intelligence officials unwilling to bend their reports to suit Trump, and Justice Department attorneys refusing to participate in Trump’s obstructions of justice.
If you think it easy to do what they did, think again. Some of them lost their jobs. Many were demoted. A few have been threatened with violence. They’ve risked all this to do what’s morally right in an America poisoned by Trump, who has no idea what it means to do what’s morally right.
That’s ultimately what the Trump stress test is all about. It’s a test of moral integrity.
Even though House and Senate Republicans are failing that test, American democracy will survive because enough public officials are passing it.
But the fact that Trump’s attempted coup won’t succeed doesn’t make it any less damaging and dangerous. A new poll from Monmouth University finds 77 percent of Trump supporters believe Biden’s win was due to fraud – a claim, I should emphasize again, backed by zero evidence.
Which means the stress test won’t be over when Joe Biden is sworn in as president January 20. In the years ahead we’ll continue to depend on the integrity of thousands of unsung heroes to do their duty in the face of threats to their livelihoods and perhaps their lives.
Meanwhile, American democracy will continue to be endangered by House and Senate Republicans who lack the moral courage to do what’s right.
RSN: Chicago's Trial of the Century and Its Many Heroes, Cinematic and Real
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=6004"><span class="small">Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News</span></a>
Monday, 23 November 2020 13:34
Wasserman writes: "This we know for sure about Chicago '68: Mayor Richard J. 'Boss/Big Dick' Daley was 100% responsible for the 'police riots' at the pivotal Democratic Convention that helped elect Richard Nixon and prolong the war in Vietnam for an inexcusable 7 more years."
Mayor Richard J. Daley stands at the microphone during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, while shouts resound from the crowd. (photo: Jack Thornell/AP)
Chicago's Trial of the Century and Its Many Heroes, Cinematic and Real
By Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News
23 November 20
his we know for sure about Chicago ’68:
Mayor Richard J. “Boss/Big Dick” Daley was 100% responsible for the “police riots” at the pivotal Democratic Convention that helped elect Richard Nixon and prolong the war in Vietnam for an inexcusable 7 more years.
Daley did this by denying our Constitutional rights — some 15,000 of us, who came to “peaceably assemble” demanding a “redress of grievances” from the war’s prime perpetrators.
Had Daley acted with any sense or grace, he’d have granted our legal right to a daily march/rally permit, plus the ability to camp in Grant and Lincoln Parks (where else were we supposed to go?).
Certainly some among us might’ve broken a few windows and caused some havoc anyway. Certainly some among us were agents paid to do just that.
But mostly we were in Chicago to peacefully march, make our points against that horrible war in Vietnam, tell the Democratic party to CEASE AND DESIST. We figured also to smoke some dope, hear some music, and then go back home to work for peace, justice, and a totally transformed American way.
Instead, the Chicago police were put in the impossible position of “preserving disorder.” Some officers acted with dignity and grace. Many senselessly assaulted us with sadistic violence. Major commissions that studied the violent disaster of that fateful August week correctly termed it a “police riot.”
But in the bigger picture, it was not the cops’ fault. We were a short-fused powder keg of stoned, hormonal draft-agers. The police were ordered to make us disappear. That was not going to happen.
Ever since, a bloviating army has somehow blamed US (the demonstrators) for the subsequent defeat of the Democrats’ presidential nominee, Hubert Humphrey.
In the Democrats’ forever corporate tradition of blaming the activist left for their own inability to win critical elections (see Congressional down-ballot races, circa 2020) we were expected to say to ourselves:
“Well, golly gee, the Democrats are running the Vietnam slaughter and trashing our Constitutional rights, but if we don’t let Daley beat the hell out of us we might jeopardize Hubert’s election, so let’s just pack up and slink home.”
There was even worse. Despite Daley’s debacle, by November Humphrey was on the brink of victory. In the campaign’s final days, Lyndon Johnson (the war’s prime perpetrator) readied a truce between North and South Vietnam that would’ve solidified a bombing halt and a likely electoral blue wave.
Despite the Democrats’ Vietnam horror show, Richard Nixon was such a loathsome, twisted monster that Humphrey was still a preferred public choice.
A truce and cease-fire almost certainly would have given Humphrey the presidency … and his own chance to end the war.
But candidate Nixon COMMITTED TREASON to prevent that from happening.
This used to be the stuff of “conspiracy theory.” But thanks to tangible FBI and CIA phone taps (released a mere fifty years after the fact) Nixon methodically sabotaged those peace talks. Simply enough, he instructed his liaison to the South Vietnam regime (a despicable cabal of mob drug dealers) that if they nixed LBJ’s peace offering, he (Nixon) would “give them a better deal.”
The South Vietnamese took him at his word. The cease-fire died. The slaughter proceeded. Tricky Dick won.
And for a rare moment in his despicable career, Nixon kept his word … but not to the American people. In alliance with the Saigon thugs, he prolonged the war another seven years, killing countless Vietnamese and at least 20,000 more Americans.
A private citizen using a secret liaison to a foreign government to undermine an official US foreign policy initiative is the definition of sedition. When peace talks collapsed, Johnson was fully informed. On the phone he screamed to his Republican buddy, Senator Everett Dirksen (R-Ill.) “THIS IS TREASON!!!”
When Nixon heard what Johnson had said, he called LBJ to deny any wrongdoing. A lengthy conversation ensued, with a taped transcript now publicly available. Nixon was lying, and Johnson knew it.
And yet, even today, we demonstrators are blamed for getting our heads bashed in and somehow costing Hubert Humphrey the 1968 election.
• • •
Which brings us to the next thing the two Dicks — Daley and Nixon — decided to do. And here we get to the film at hand.
It wasn’t enough that various government agencies had conspired to trash our peaceful marches.
When Nixon did take power, he demanded payback from those who’d dared to ask for those permits to march.
Aaron Sorkin’s Trial of the Chicago 7 (Netflix) is the latest of a slew of dramatizations come out over the years. This one shows us a quirky Attorney General John Mitchell summoning a young prosecutor to take the case. The Nixonian Mitchell — an authoritarian thug — blames the attack on an apparent insult from LBJ’s outgoing attorney general, Ramsey Clark, a legendary liberal.
Mitchell’s anointed lead prosecutor, Dick Schultz (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is shown to be a thoughtful, conscientious young man with moral and political qualms about the case.
He wasn’t. For melodramatic purposes, Sorkin wants this guy to be sympathetic and appealing. Nobody remembers him — or his immediate boss, Thomas Foran — for any of that.
Judge Julius Hoffman, on the other hand (as played by Frank Langella), is a crazed, insufferable petty tyrant, a man harsh and unjust almost beyond belief.
And thus we come to his latest cinematic reincarnation.
Aaron Sorkin is the thoughtful producer/director of the entertaining West Wing, a signature American political drama. He makes the very committed real-life peace activist Martin Sheen into a President we can only pray for.
Sorkin’s watchable touch is on full display in Trial.
But unlike Marty Sheen’s Oval Office, Chicago was as real as Nixon’s treason.
We can be grateful for much. We see a Stalinesque circus trial run by a wacko fascist, pre-ordained to nail brave, committed activists for the “crime” of demanding peace.
We see the eight defendants, their lawyers, and the soon-to-be-murdered Fred Hampton portrayed with a sympathetic touch. In the hands of someone less talented or more Reaganesque, our beloved co-conspirators could easily have been smeared as traitors.
But granting all that — and it’s a lot — the named defendants were actual, nuanced people who deserved to be accurately portrayed. And here the film runs a spectrum:
ABBIE HOFFMAN
We start with Sasha Baron Cohen’s astonishing lead portrayal of the older brother I never had. Countless young activists followed Abbie’s career with awe, inspiration, and astonishment. In 1984, I began a cover story on him for New Age Magazine as he was seeing his parole officer. We conspired for peace, No Nukes, and social justice until April 1989, when I learned of his death while on a live talk show. It remains an indescribable moment.
By then Abbie had pioneered the art of science of political chutzpah. He’d been busted for an ill-advised coke deal, then fled underground for seven years. Hunted by federal authorities, Abbie got a nose job and “surfaced” as “Barry Freed,” a high profile eco-activist, fighting (successfully) against the destruction of the St. Lawrence River.
With “running mate” Johanna Lawrenson, a model and literary figure in her own right, Abbie/Barry appeared at countless high profile organizing meetings, public rallies, and media blitzes. As the police searched high and low, New York governor Hugh Carey and US senator Daniel Moynahan proudly cited “Barry” for his civic commitment.
Abbie could talk interminably with my liberal Jewish mother, who also loved him. While smoking various joints, he held brilliant, erudite discussions on community organizing and political theory. He also told the world we’d hold hands, surround the Pentagon, and levitate it off the ground. (The pundits scoffed, but the cops never did let us circle the building.)
In Sorkin’s 7, Sacha Baron Cohen gets Abbie as only a fellow Trickster could do. Abbie would have loved Borat’s piercing punkings of pompous tyrants like Rudy Giuliani and Mike Pence.
As a conjoined spirit, Borat/Abbie’s deeply informed bohemian brilliance and soulful commitment to peace and social justice become the heart of this drama. But Sorkin does it a needless disservice in the final footnotes, when he dismisses Abbie’s post-trial persona merely as having “committed suicide” in 1989.
The scant, dubious epitaph (his running mate Johanna still refers to Abbie’s death as “an apparent suicide”) entirely misses Abbie’s astounding post-trial triumphs as a major ecological pioneer and an inspirational mentor to countless young activists.
There is no excuse for that omission, Mr. Sorkin. There’s no reason you can’t yet change it.
TOM HAYDEN
Abbie’s oddest coupling was with his visionary co-conspirator, Tom Hayden, an equally brilliant, forever activist who also inspired a generation.
As portrayed by Eddie Redmayne, Tom was serious, forceful, and driven to win. Despite his antipathy to hippie theatrics, Tom was (like Abbie) as charismatic as he was relentless.
But Redmayne is physically slight. He doesn’t quite get Tom’s full power. Stocky, strong, and seriously competitive, Tom played varsity tennis at the University of Michigan. He was also editor of the U of M Daily (Class of ’61), where I followed him as editorial director six years later.
Tom unlocked the paper’s library. His evolving leftism resonated through the building for years to come.
After a brief teaching career, Tom moved to an urban ghetto, making tangible the career of a community organizer. When he married Jane Fonda (who was at least as radical as he was) our activist Earth shook on its axis. He later spent twenty very productive years in the California legislature, walking the margins between the grassroots community and the Democratic Party.
Even into our sixties, I felt star-struck around Tom Hayden. Last I heard him speak, he was as fiery, angry, and unbowed as we see him in 7. Some of us had dinner plans with him the week he died, which still hurts.
JERRY RUBIN
Far down the scale is 7’s portrayal of Jerry Rubin. As Abbie’s sidekick, Jerry was bright, funny, and effective. Played by Jeremy Strong, he comes off as a somewhat hapless buffoon, which he definitely was not.
Jerry later burned out on movement work, turning to health food, networking, and the outspoken pursuit of wealth. Married to Mimi Leonard, with two children, he wrote about his sex life and debated Abbie — to mixed reviews — in a not-so-tongue-in-cheek shtick called “Yippie versus Yuppie.” Sorkin’s epitaph cites Jerry merely as having become a “stockbroker.” To say the least, the reality is far more complex.
DAVE DELLINGER
Here Sorkin’s film hits a bad bottom. Played by John Carroll Lynch, we sense a suburbanite whose spiritual roots in a lifetime of pacifism are not quite clear.
In one truly inexcusable moment, Dave is shown punching a court officer (and then apologizing for it).
THIS ABSOLUTELY DID NOT HAPPEN!!!
Dave Dellinger spent years in prison for refusing to take up arms during World War II. He was an elder beacon for countless nonviolent protests.
He titled his autobiography From Yale to Jail. Even when sorely provoked — at least in his adulthood — it was a point of honor that Dave Dellinger would refrain from physical violence.
Years later, as we sat in at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, Dave made a pretty convincing case that Abbie had been murdered. When election protection attorney Bob Fitrakis held hearings on how Ohio’s 2004 election had been stolen, Dellinger came to Columbus while conducting a long water-only fast.
It was also Dave — not Tom — who read the names of those killed in Vietnam. He did it at the beginning of the trial, not the end. The litany included Vietnamese names, not just American ones.
Like Tom (and unlike the actor who portrays him) Dave’s powerful physical presence reflected his heartfelt commitments. There are artistic liberties that work in this film, but that alleged moment of personal violence does not. Mr. Sorkin, please edit it out!
BOBBY SEALE
Opinions also vary on Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s portrayal of Bobby Seale. Clearly the government charged Bobby in hopes of confronting the jury with a “scary black man” amidst all those white defendants. His being bound and gagged in the courtroom was longer and more despicable than what we see.
Many years later, Abbie and I joined him as we spoke together at Temple University. He was formidable, charismatic, amiable … and deep into a cookbook based on the magic of his family’s Texas barbecue. Bobby Seale was really fun to be with … and none of his radicalism had boiled away.
FRED HAMPTON
In 7, Chicago’s legendary Black Panther leader (played by Kelvin Harrison Jr.) is shown as a serious-minded young (21) courtroom attendee who confers frequently with Bobby Seale. The Judge loudly identifies him for the jury. Later Bobby rightfully rages about Fred Hampton’s outrageous, wholly unprovoked official murder.
Along with Mark Clark, Hampton was in fact assassinated after the trial had ended. But Sorkin does us the important service of showing a police state willing to bind, gag, imprison, and murder bothersome black activists for no defensible reason.
THE LAWYERS, THE INVISIBLES & THE YIPPIE
I did not know Attorneys William Kunstler and Lenny Weinglass or Attorney-General Ramsey Clark, all of whom played key roles in 7. Those who did generally say they’re well portrayed.
Co-defendants Renny Davis, Jon Froines, and Lee Weiner are given roles of little consequence.
Except for a fictional under-cover agent, and for one who answers the phone at the “conspiracy office,” no women are granted even supporting roles in this film. Apparently based at least in part on the legendary Judy “Gumbo” Albert, Sorkin names his one female co-conspirator to evoke the image of Weather Underground leader Bernadine Dohrn.
Had more women been present in movement leadership back then, the level of in-fighting might’ve been greatly reduced, and the power of our demonstrations greatly enhanced.
Judy’s partner Stew Albert also does not appear, along with many others who played important roles in organizing those demonstrations.
Also absent is the conspiracy’s real “missing link,” Paul Krassner, which is a shame.
Paul was the genius publisher of The Realist, home to some of the movement’s vanguard reporting and graphic humor (including an iconic portrayal of Walt Disney’s cartoon pantheon wallowing in an obscene orgy).
The original “un-indicted co-conspirator,” Paul walked with a profound limp caused by a police beating. He was gentle, kind, insanely funny, and completely outside the box, especially in places like the countercultural Starwood Festival (still going, after these years) where he annually enlightened stoned throngs of “sky-clad” pagans.
While Abbie and Tom debated hippie versus politico, Paul invented the term Yippie to meld the two. (When called the Yippie Godfather, he declined the honor, saying he was “still awaiting the paternity test.”)
It was Paul who promised to put LSD in Chicago’s water supply. His hallucinogenic trial testimony infuriated Tom and Abbie, who refused to speak to him for months. But eventually they reconciled, as loving activists always do.
• • •
All of which makes us ache with timeless longing just to see and be with these folks again, even for an afternoon.
This film — like many others made about this trial — has rightfully provoked a cacophony of differing views. May it always be thus.
Overall, Aaron Sorkin’s gift is of course imperfect ... but one that serves as a sympathetic, astute rendition of a precious activist moment worthy of the ages.
What matters above all is that 50 years after it happened, respectful dramatizations of consequence are still being made about this amazing show of courageous defiance.
It came amidst a terrible war, when a synchronous band of justice fighters refused to bow before a hideous tyranny.
To everyone’s everlasting benefit, we see them emerging … for all time to come … as the genuine, beloved, deeply missed heroes they really were.
Harvey Wasserman’s Chicago ’68 club wounds helped inspire The People’s Spiral of US History (www.solartopia.org). He co-convenes the Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Coalition, joinable by zoom every Monday, 5-6:30 p.m. Eastern Time through www.grassrootsep.org.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
12 Million Americans Are About to Lose Unemployment Insurance. Congress Is on Recess.
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=54074"><span class="small">Emily Stewart, Vox</span></a>
Monday, 23 November 2020 13:34
Stewart writes: "If regular people have to skip their holiday with loved ones, then Congress and the White House should cancel theirs, too, and get to work on crafting and passing legislation to help those people ride out the rest of the crisis."
Turkeys being handed out at a food distribution event ahead of Thanksgiving in Brooklyn, New York, on November 20. (photo: Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images)
12 Million Americans Are About to Lose Unemployment Insurance. Congress Is on Recess.
By Emily Stewart, Vox
23 November 20
illions of people have had to put their lives on pause and make enormous sacrifices throughout the Covid-19 pandemic — including, now, canceling Thanksgiving.
If regular people have to skip their holiday with loved ones, then Congress and the White House should cancel theirs, too, and get to work on crafting and passing legislation to help those people ride out the rest of the crisis.
Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and any subsequent holidays this year are not going to be very festive. A vaccine looks to be on the horizon, but it won’t be here by then, at least not in a widespread capacity. Meanwhile, millions of Americans are still out of a job, and if whatever federal help they’ve received hasn’t dried up yet, it’s about to. An estimated 12 million workers are poised to lose their unemployment benefits on December 26, the day after Christmas. Paused student loans, rent, and mortgages are all coming due.
The country has for months been locked in a will-they-or-won’t-they game on getting more financial support from the federal government. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, the $2.2 trillion stimulus package signed into law in late March, made a real difference in the economy and in people’s lives. But many of the supports it put in place are over or are soon ending, and Washington lawmakers are home for the holidays instead of helping. Both the House and Senate are on recess for Thanksgiving week.
There is plenty of blame to go around here, but it’s not equally shared. In May, House Democrats passed the HEROES Act, a $3 trillion proposal to follow up the CARES Act. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has panned the legislation as “unserious,” but Senate Republicans have failed to agree on a plan of their own for more stimulus. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin spent much of the fall in a back-and-forth over potential stimulus plans, and while they were never quite able to put together a full agreement, it’s also never been clear what McConnell and the broader GOP would agree to in the first place.
Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have asked McConnell to restart stimulus negotiations. In a letter to the Kentucky Republican sent the week before Thanksgiving, they asked him to “join us at the negotiating table ... so that we can work towards a bipartisan, bicameral Covid-19 relief agreement to crush the virus and save American lives,” warning that the “pandemic and economic recession will not end without our help.” Schumer has signaled that there’s openness from Republicans to engage in discussions again, though it’s unclear what that commitment looks like.
“The odds that the economy backtracks, that job losses and unemployment increase, are high. You’ve got the intensifying pandemic, you’ve got very little prospect for any help from the federal government until the next president is inaugurated, and that’s early next year,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, recently told Vox. “It’s a pretty noxious brew.”
If a vaccine is relatively near, why not just get people to the finish line?
The economic downturn spurred by the pandemic has not been as bad as many economists originally feared, due in no small part to the actions the federal government took earlier this year. Savings rates actually went up throughout much of the year, and poverty did not increase as people scaled back discretionary spending, and programs such as expanded unemployment insurance, eviction moratoriums, student loan and mortgage forbearance, and stimulus checks had a real impact on household finances.
Now there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, but what is actually at the end of the tunnel is still uncertain.
As coronavirus cases spike across the US, calls for more shutdowns have increased, but they’re not a realistic option if there isn’t more government help. As my colleague Dylan Scott recently noted, lockdowns are a regressive policy, because it’s primarily low-wage and low-income workers whose workplaces are affected. So we end up with half-measures like curfews, which businesses and workers hate and experts say don’t really make a difference; and schools being shuttered while restaurants and bars remain open, as Vox’s Anna North recently explained:
Money from the federal CARES Act kept many businesses afloat through shutdowns earlier this year, and expanded unemployment benefits and $1,200 stimulus checks kept many laid-off workers out of poverty. But with no more help on the horizon for businesses or ordinary people, shutdowns at the state and local level could have a steep cost, many say, leaving some local leaders hesitant to try them.
On December 26, more than 12 million workers who were receiving unemployment benefits through a pair of expanded programs under the CARES Act will lose assistance, according to an estimate from the Century Foundation think tank. On December 31, renters, homeowners, and people who have student debt face a steep cliff as well. Washington is scheduled to be on recess then, too.
What President Biden Won't Touch: Foreign Policy, Sacred Cows, and the US Military
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=49236"><span class="small">Danny Sjursen, TomDispatch</span></a>
Monday, 23 November 2020 13:34
Sjursen writes: "Don't count on Status-quo Joe to slaughter Washington's sacred cows of foreign policy or on his national security team to topple the golden calves of American empire."
Joe Biden. (photo: Alex Majoli/Magnum Photos)
What President Biden Won't Touch: Foreign Policy, Sacred Cows, and the US Military
By Danny Sjursen, TomDispatch
23 November 20
Here’s the strange thing. In 2016, Donald Trump campaigned vociferously to end America’s forever wars and yet, as he fruitlessly fights departing the White House four years later, he’s probably going to leave more troops (and air power) garrisoned across the Greater Middle East and Africa than were there when he first arrived. American soldiers are still in Syria, still in Iraq, and still in Afghanistan. And in his last moments, he’s still talking about removing some -- but not all -- of them. In 2019 (the last period for which we have figures), the U.S. dropped a record number of bombs on Afghanistan. Similarly, in the first seven months of 2020, there were more U.S. air strikes in Somalia than during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama years combined (and Kenya might be next). No matter that, in each case, the president invariably claimed that the U.S. military was heading out the door. As it turned out, he proved the easiest president imaginable for the officials of the national security state to bulldoze, bully, or sneak around. Think of him as the classic sucker-born-every-minute when it came to this country’s forever wars.
And here’s an even stranger thing. Hardly noticed in the hubbub, oil well by oil well, suppressed environmental regulation by suppressed environmental regulation, he’s become ever more committed to making forever war on the planet itself.
What a “wartime” president Donald Trump has, in fact, proved to be!
Now, in his own chaotic fashion, whether he thinks so or not, he’s going to turn over both versions of forever war to Joe Biden. In that context, TomDispatch regular Danny Sjursen, author most recently of Patriotic Dissent: America in the Age of Endless War, considers the national security state’s forever-war system that captured The Donald and now seems about to become part of the Biden years. God save us, if it truly does turn out to be a forever system.
-Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch
n this mystifying moment, the post-electoral sentiments of most Americans can be summed up either as “Ding dong! The witch is dead!” or “We got robbed!” Both are problematic, not because the two candidates were intellectually indistinguishable or ethically equivalent, but because each jingle is laden with a dubious assumption: that President Donald Trump’s demise would provide either decisive deliverance or prove an utter disaster.
While there were indeed areas where his ability to cause disastrous harm lent truth to such a belief -- race relations, climate change, and the courts come to mind -- in others, it was distinctly (to use a dangerous phrase) overkill. Nowhere was that more true than with America’s expeditionary version of militarism, its forever wars of this century, and the venal system that continues to feed it.
For nearly two years, We the People were coached to believe that the 2020 election would mean everything, that November 3rd would be democracy’s ultimate judgment day. What if, however, when it comes to issues of war, peace, and empire, “Decision 2020” proves barely meaningful? After all, in the election campaign just past, Donald Trump’s sweeping war-peace rhetoric and Joe Biden’s hedging aside, neither nuclear-code aspirant bothered to broach the most uncomfortable questions about America’s uniquely intrusive global role. Neither dared dissent from normative notions about America’s posture and policy “over there,” nor challenge the essence of the war-state, a sacred cow if ever there was one.
That blessed bovine has enshrined permanent policies that seem beyond challenge: Uncle Sam’s right and duty to forward deploy troops just about anywhere on the planet; garrison the globe; carry out aerial assassinations; and unilaterally implement starvation sanctions. Likewise the systemic structures that implement and incentivize such rogue-state behavior are never questioned, especially the existence of a sprawling military-industrial complex that has infiltrated every aspect of public life, while stealing money that might have improved America’s infrastructure or wellbeing. It has engorged itself at the taxpayer’s expense, while peddling American blood money -- and blood -- on absurd foreign adventures and autocratic allies, even as it corrupted nearly every prominent public paymaster and policymaker.
This election season, neither Democrats nor Republicans challenged the cultural components justifying the great game, which is evidence of one thing: empires come home, folks, even if the troops never seem to.
The Company He Keeps
As the election neared, it became impolite to play the canary in American militarism’s coal mine or risk raising Biden’s record -- or probable prospects -- on minor matters like war and peace. After all, his opponent was a monster, so noting the holes in Biden’s block of Swiss cheese presumably amounted to useful idiocy -- if not sinister collusion -- when it came to Trump’s reelection. Doing so was a surefire way to jettison professional opportunities and find yourself permanently uninvited to the coolest Beltway cocktail parties or interviews on cable TV.
George Orwell warned of the dangers of such “intellectual cowardice” more than 70 years ago in a proposed preface to his classic novel Animal Farm. “At any given moment,” he wrote, “there is an orthodoxy... that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it... Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness.”
And that’s precisely what progressive paragon Cornel West warned against seven months ago after his man, Senator Bernie Sanders -- briefly, the Democratic frontrunner -- suddenly proved a dead candidate walking. “Vote for Biden, but don’t lie about who he really is,” the stalwart scholar suggested. It seems just enough Americans did the former (phew!), but mainstream media makers and consumers mostly forgot about the salient second part of his sentiment.
With the electoral outcome now apparent -- if not yet accepted in Trump World -- perhaps such politeness (and the policing that goes with it) will fade away, ushering in a renaissance of fourth estate oppositional truth-telling. In that way -- in my dreams at least -- persistently energized progressives might send President Joe Biden down dovish alternative avenues, perhaps even landing some appointments in an executive branch that now drives foreign policy (though, if I’m honest, I’m hardly hopeful on either count).
One look at Uncle Joe’s inbound nieces and nephews brings to mind Aesop's fabled moral: “You are judged by the company you keep.”
Think-Tank Imperialists
One thing is already far too clear: Biden’s shadow national security team will be a distinctly status-quo squad. To know where future policymakers might head, it always helps to know where they came from. And when it comes to Biden’s foreign policy crew, including a striking number of women and a fair number of Obama administration and Clinton 2016 campaign retreads -- they were mostly in Trump-era holding patterns in the connected worlds of strategic consulting and hawkish think tanking.
In fact, the national security bio of the archetypal Biden bro (or sis) would go something like this: she (he) sprang from an Ivy League school, became a congressional staffer, got appointed to a mid-tier role on Barack Obama’s national security council, consulted for WestExec Advisors (an Obama alumni-founded outfit linking tech firms and the Department of Defense), was a fellow at the Center for New American Security (CNAS), had some defense contractor ties, and married someone who’s also in the game.
It helps as well to follow the money. In other words, how did the Biden bunch make it and who pays the outfits that have been paying them in the Trump years? None of this is a secret: their two most common think-tank homes -- CNAS and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) -- are the second- and sixth-highest recipients, respectively, of U.S. government and defense-contractor funding. The top donors to CNAS are Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and the Department of Defense. Most CSIS largesse comes from Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon.
How the inevitable conflicts of interest play out is hardly better concealed. To take just one example, in 2016, Michèle Flournoy, CNAS co-founder, ex-Pentagon official, and “odds-on favorite" to become Biden’s secretary of defense, exchanged emails with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) ambassador in Washington. She pitched a project whereby CNAS analysts would, well, analyze whether Washington should maintain drone-sales restrictions in a non-binding multilateral “missile technology control" agreement. The UAE's autocratic government then paid CNAS $250,000 to draft a report that (you won’t be surprised to learn) argued for amending the agreement to allow that country to purchase American-manufactured drones.
Which is just what Flournoy and company’s supposed nemeses in the Trump administration then did this very July past. Again, no surprise. American drones seem to have a way of ending up in the hands of Gulf theocracies -- states with abhorrent human rights records that use such planes to surveil and brutally bomb Yemeni civilians.
If it’s too much to claim that a future defense secretary Flournoy would be the UAE’s (wo)man in Washington, you at least have to wonder. Worse still, with those think-tank, security-consulting, and defense-industry ties of hers, she’s anything but alone among Biden’s top prospects. Just consider a few other abridged resumes:
• Tony Blinken, frontrunner for national security adviser: CSIS; WestExec (which he co-founded with Flournoy); and CNN analyst.
• Jake Sullivan, a shoo-in for a “senior post in a potential administration”: the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (“peace,” in this case, being funded by 10 military agencies and defense contractors) and Macro Advisory Partners, a strategic consultancy run by former British spy chiefs.
• Avril Haines, a top contender for CIA director or director of national intelligence: CNAS-the Brookings Institution; WestExec; and Palantir Technologies, a controversial, CIA-seeded, NSA-linked data-mining firm.
An extra note about Hicks: she’s the head of Biden’s Department of Defense transition team and also a senior vice president at CSIS. There, she hosts that think tank’s “Defense 2020” podcast. In case anyone’s still wondering where CSIS’s bread is buttered, here’s how Hicks opens each episode:
“This podcast is made possible by contributions from BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and the Thales Group.”
In other words, given what we already know about Joe Biden’s previous gut-driven policies that pass for “middle of the road” in this anything but middling country of ours, the experiences and affiliations of his “A-Team” don’t bode well for systemic-change seekers. Remember, this is a president-elect who assured rich donors that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he were elected. Should he indeed stock his national security team with such a conflicts-of-interest-ridden crowd, consider America’s sacred cows of foreign policy all but saved.
Biden’s outfit is headed for office, it seems, to right the Titanic, not rock the boat.
Off The Table: A Paradigm Shift
In this context, join me in thinking about what won’t be on the next presidential menu when it comes to the militarization of American foreign policy.
Don’t expect major changes when it comes to:
• One-sided support for Israel that enables permanent Palestinian oppression and foments undying ire across the Greater Middle East. Tony Blinken put it this way: as president, Joe Biden "would not tie military assistance to Israel to things like annexation [of all or large portions of the occupied West Bank] or other decisions by the Israeli government with which we might disagree."
• Unapologetic support for various Gulf State autocracies and theocracies that, as they cynically collude with Israel, will only continue to heighten tensions with Iran and facilitate yet more grim war crimes in Yemen. Beyond Michèle Flournoy’s professional connections with the UAE, Gulf kingdoms generously fund the very think tanks that so many Biden prospects have populated. Saudi Arabia, for example, offers annual donations to Brookings and the Rand Corporation; the UAE, $1 million for a new CSIS office building; and Qatar, $14.8 million to Brookings.
• America’s historically unprecedented and provocative expeditionary military posture globally, including at least 800 bases in 80 countries, seems likely to be altered only in marginal ways. As Jake Sullivan put it in a June CSIS interview: “I’m not arguing for getting out of every base in the Middle East. There is a military posture dimension to this as a reduced footprint.”
Above all, it’s obvious that the Biden bunch has no desire to slow down, no less halt, the “revolving door” that connects national security work in the government and jobs or security consulting positions in the defense industry. The same goes for the think tanks that the arms producers amply fund to justify the whole circus.
In such a context, count on this: the militarization of American society and the “thank-you-for-your-service” fetishization of American soldiers will continue to thrive, exhibit A being the way Biden now closes almost any speech with “May God protect our troops.”
All of this makes for a rather discouraging portrait of an old man's coming administration. Still, consider it a version of truth in advertising. Joe and company are likely to continue to be who they’ve always been and who they continue to say they are. After all, transformational presidencies and unexpected pivots are historically rare phenomena. Expecting the moon from a man mostly offering MoonPies almost guarantees disappointment.
Obama Encore or Worse?
Don’t misunderstand me: a Biden presidency will certainly leave some maneuvering room at the margins of national security strategy. Think nuclear treaties with the Russians (which the Trump administration had been systematically tearing up) and the possible thawing of at least some of the tensions with Tehran.
Nor should even the most cynical among us underestimate the significance of having a president who actually accepts the reality of climate change and the need to switch to alternative energy sources as quickly as possible. Noam Chomsky’s bold assertion that the human species couldn’t endure a second Trump term, thanks to the environmental catastrophe, nuclear brinksmanship, and pandemic negligence he represents, was anything but hyperbole. Yet recall that he was also crystal clear about the need “for an organized public” to demand change and “impose pressures” on the new administration the moment the new president is inaugurated.
Yet, in the coming Biden years, there is also a danger that empowered Democrats in an imperial presidency (when it comes to foreign policy) will actually escalate a two-front New Cold War with China and Russia. And there’s always the worry that the ascension of a more genteel emperor could co-opt -- or at least quiet -- a growing movement of anti-Trumpers, including the vets of this country’s forever wars who are increasingly dressing in antiwar clothing.
What seems certain is that, as ever, salvation won’t spring from the top. Don’t count on Status-quo Joe to slaughter Washington’s sacred cows of foreign policy or on his national security team to topple the golden calves of American empire. In fact, the defense industry seems bullish on Biden. As Raytheon CEO Gregory Hayes recently put it, “Obviously, there is a concern that defense spending will go way down if there is a Biden administration, but frankly I think that’s ridiculous.” Or consider retired Marine Corps major general turned defense consultant Arnold Punaro who recently said of Biden’s coming tenure, “I think the industry will have, when it comes to national security, a very positive view.”
Given the evidence that business-as-usual will continue in the Biden years, perhaps it’s time to take that advice from Cornel West, absorb the truth about Biden’s future national security squad, and act accordingly. There’s no top-down salvation on the agenda -- not from Joe or his crew of consummate insiders. Pressure and change will flow from the grassroots or it won’t come at all.
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ithin establishment circles, Donald Trump’s failure to win re-election has prompted merry singing and bell-ringing galore. If you read the New York Times or watch MSNBC, the song featured in the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz nicely captures the mood of the moment.
inancial regulators subject banks to stress tests to see if they have enough capital to withstand sharp downturns.
his we know for sure about Chicago ’68:
illions of people have had to put their lives on pause and make enormous sacrifices throughout the Covid-19 pandemic — including, now, 
n this mystifying moment, the post-electoral sentiments of most Americans can be summed up either as “Ding dong! The witch is dead!” or “We got robbed!” Both are problematic, not because the two candidates were intellectually indistinguishable or ethically equivalent, but because each jingle is laden with a dubious assumption: that President Donald Trump’s demise would provide either decisive deliverance or prove an utter disaster.
