SEPTEMBER 19, 2018
Dystopian Racial Apocalypse Tomorrow: May the Purge Be With You Move over George Orwell and Aldous Huxley! Although it depicts a not-so-brave-world and is set in the near future instead of 1984, The First Purge is in the tradition of these dystopian tales about futuristic fascistic states. This is the fourth installment in the popular film franchise about an anti-Utopia America ruled by a quasi-totalitarian government run by a third party Continue Reading...
On 8 May 2018, US President Donald Trump, true to his style and ‘America First’ philosophy, walked out of the Iran nuclear deal, technically known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). A fortnight has elapsed and it would be pertinent to examine the geopolitical implications of Trump’s decision. The US’ Position By now it is reasonably clear why Trump withdrew from the deal. He has failed to provide any rational argument against Continue Reading...
Eco-Messages Abound in this Wild Kingdom Summer has arrived and that means only one thing here in Hollywood: Bring out the blockbusters! Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is the fifth in the film franchise featuring frenetically genetically-engineered dinosaurs in modern times who run amok, wreaking havoc that began with Steven Spielberg’s 1993 screen adaptation of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park novel, with Crichton’s screenplay. The Continue Reading...
Trump allegedly complained to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that after the 2015 nuclear deal, the Iranians “think they can do anything they want.” Presumably Trump was referring to Iran’s geopolitical reach in the Middle East, where it had gathered up allies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. It is likely that Trump’s violation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the deal signed between Iran and the five permanent Continue Reading...
Here are a couple of facts to make your head explode. A mere 15 bills that are not ceremonial in nature or rescind existing laws have passed Congress since Donald Trump became president. This includes a bill sent to the president this week that rescinds a law forbidding discrimination in car loans. (I am not making this up.) Meanwhile, the august House Rules Committee has sent a record-shattering 84 bills to the House floor this year under Continue Reading...
Please, motherfuckers. Fucking, fucking please stop acting like anything other than confirmation is going to happen with Gina Haspel. When Barack Obama nominated John Brennan to be the director of the CIA, the vote to confirm him in March 2013 was 63-34-3. Brennan had been the third-ranked CIA official during the time of the torture used on supposed al-Qaeda detainees in the few years after 9/11, many of them completely innocent (although it Continue Reading...
The news last week that the president of the United States lied repeatedly about the $130,000 hush payment to porn star Stormy Daniels was greeted less with outrage than a practiced yawn, and with every passing lie -- which come at the rate of four or five a day and a mind-boggling 3,000-plus since Donald Trump took office -- that attitude becomes increasingly dangerous. This is because the pandemic of lies is so blatant and so vast that we risk Continue Reading...
NBC is reporting that Mike Pompeo lacks the votes in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to have his nomination to be Secretary of State be favorably reported out of committee on Monday night. Democrats on the committee have expressed fears that Pompeo, a warmonger, will reinforce the worst tendencies of Trump. Pompeo has been director of the Central Intelligence Agency for the past year. He was tapped to succeed ousted former Secretary of Continue Reading...
At a critical moment in the 2016 presidential campaign, President Obama met with Republican congressional leaders and, after presenting them with evidence of Russian tampering, asked that they uniformly condemn it. GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and others refused. The evidence just wasn’t there. But it was. And many of the same lawmakers eagerly condemned Hillary Clinton’s perceived misdeed, as reported by the FBI. So much for love of country.
Liberal democracy faces grave dangers, most significantly, perhaps, from rapacious capitalism that unremittingly concentrates wealth. Putin is another threat. After consolidating his own power in Russia, he has stepped up a campaign against liberalism abroad, first in Russia’s “near abroad” in Eastern Europe, and now the US. Is Trump his latest trophy?
For eight years, the GOP employed strategic obstructionism to stymie Obama’s mildly progressive agenda, even when his proposals, such as the Affordable Care Act or the stimulus, closely aligned with their own. Putting country first? Nope. This was pure partisanship in the service of partisanship. And it worked!
Is the so-called “liberal,” “elite” media really as cosseted and cloistered as its critics suggest? Actually, yes. Like the Democracy Party, the media – defined here as the mainstream variety – largely comprises well-educated, coastal types who have little in common (and often disdain) middle-America, working class whites. Little wonder it has earned the latter’s ire.
What happens when the purported party of the working class abandons its proletarian roots, while the other major party pushes crazed conspiracy theories, paranoia, and racism as an obfuscatory tactic to conceal its plutocratic agenda? A virulent populism that threatens the republic. Whose to blame for Trump? We all are.
How did a clownish buffoon rise from obscurity to lead one of the world’s great civilizations that produced soaring art and culture? Historians have been asking the question since the demise of the Third Reich. Hitler confounds. Here are some clues: cunning exploitation of nativist fears, exploitation of irresistible propaganda, and “bottomless mendacity.” Found familiar. It should.
