Month: April 2025

What Does AI Say About My Writing?

W.J. Astore

Insights from My Computer Friends 

I recently checked in with HAL 9000, actually ChatGPT and DeepSeek, to see what AI says about my writing on military policy. I’ll let ChatGPT go first:

William Astore, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and historian, has emerged as a prominent voice critiquing America’s militaristic culture and its pervasive influence on domestic and foreign policy. Through his essays on platforms like TomDispatch and Truthdig, Astore offers a candid examination of how militarism has become deeply embedded in American society, often to its detriment.​

The Militarization of American Society

Astore argues that the United States has transitioned from a nation with a military to a militarized nation. He contends that this shift is not marked by overt displays of military power but by a subtle, pervasive presence of militaristic values in everyday life. This includes the normalization of war, the glorification of military service, and the integration of military imagery into civilian spaces. He warns that such normalization desensitizes the public to the realities of war and erodes democratic values. ​

The Business of War

In his critique of the military-industrial complex, Astore highlights how war has become a profitable enterprise for a select few. He references General Smedley Butler’s assertion that “war is a racket,” emphasizing that the true beneficiaries of war are often corporations and political elites, rather than the general populace. Astore suggests that this profit-driven approach to war leads to prolonged conflicts with little regard for their human or financial costs. 

The Disconnect Between Military and Society

Astore points out the growing divide between the military and civilian sectors. He notes that the all-volunteer force, while composed of individuals who choose to serve, often does so out of limited economic opportunities rather than a deep-seated desire to fight. This creates a situation where the broader public remains detached from the consequences of war, leading to a lack of accountability and understanding. ​

A Call for Reflection and Change

Throughout his writings, Astore advocates for a return to a more restrained and reflective approach to military engagement. He urges Americans to critically assess the true costs of war and to reconsider the glorification of militarism in public life. By fostering a more informed and engaged citizenry, Astore believes the U.S. can move towards a foreign policy that prioritizes diplomacy and peace over conflict.​

Astore’s insights challenge readers to confront the complexities of American militarism and its implications for both domestic society and international relations. His work serves as a reminder of the importance of maintaining a vigilant and informed public to ensure that the nation’s military endeavors align with its democratic ideals.​

*****

That’s a fair assessment, I’d say. I do believe America is too war- and profit-driven, too adulatory toward the military, and also too disconnected from the grim realities of war. And I have called for a recommitment to and renewal of diplomacy. A “vigilant and informed public” is exactly what Ike called for in 1961 when he said that only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry could keep the military-industrial-congressional complex in check. I suppose that’s why the MICC works to keep Americans isolated from and ignorant about war. The last thing the MICC wants is alert and knowledgeable citizens who challenge it.

HAL 9000 (from the movie “2001”)

Let’s turn to DeepSeek and its summary, which isn’t quite as comprehensive as ChatGPT:

William Astore, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and historian, is a vocal critic of U.S. military policy and militarism. His key arguments include:

  1. Excessive Militarization. Astore argues that the U.S. has become overly reliant on military solutions to geopolitical problems, leading to endless wars and bloated defense budgets. He critiques the “military-industrial complex” (a term popularized by Eisenhower) for perpetuating this cycle.
  2. Militarism in Society. He highlights how militarism has seeped into American culture, with the glorification of the military. pervasive defense contracting, and the influence of retired generals in media and politics.
  3. Failed Wars & Lack of Accountability. Astore condemns U.S. interventions (e.g. Iraq, Afghanistan) as costly failures, driven by hubris and flawed assumptions, with little accountability for policymakers.
  4. Erosion of Democracy. He warns that unchecked militarism undermines democratic values, as vast resources are diverted to the military while domestic needs (education, healthcare, infrastructure) are neglected.
  5. Need for Reform. Astore advocates for a more restrained foreign policy, reduced defense spending, and greater public skepticism toward military leaders and war propaganda.

*****

Again, I think that’s a fair summary. I like the emphasis on lack of accountability. So-called experts are never called to account for advocating for disastrous wars; indeed, they’re usually promoted to higher positions. You can never go wrong by going “strong,” at least rhetorically. The worst thing in America is to argue for diplomacy and peace and being proven right, for you were right “for the wrong reasons,” i.e. sure, Iraq and Afghanistan were disastrous wars that killed, wounded, and displaced millions, but it would have been pusillanimous and “weak” of America not to slap around a few countries in the aftermath of 9/11. So put on your “big boy” warrior fatigues and start kicking ass, because that’s what real Americans do.

It’s interesting that AI programs probably wouldn’t write that last sentence but they can “write” sober and rational prose rather effectively.

ChatGPT and DeepSeek can be useful tools, I think, if used judiciously. I worry, however, about AI programs being used for decision-making, especially decisions related to life and death in war. So, for example, I’ve read about AI programs being used for target selection in places like Gaza. Just what we need—ever-more automated death.

The NFL Draft Is Back!

W.J. Astore

Bigger and Badder than Ever

The NFL draft started last night, in prime time. I’m fascinated, flabbergasted, and horrified by all the ink spilled and money spent on the draft–what a spectacle it’s become! Even before the draft, there are literally thousands of “mock” drafts, including those that attempt to predict all seven rounds of the draft, like this example. It’s insane! Why go through these exercises when you can simply wait for the draft results? I guess articles like this get clicks, but still …

After the obligatory national anthem and a military flyover featuring four helicopters (A flyover? For the draft?), the commissioner got down to business, Somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 people were in attendance outside of Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin. There’s one tradition I do like: lusty boos for the commish (the commissioner). It’s all in good fun.

Anyhow, many people have noted the spectacle of mostly Black players being “selected” by mostly white owners. Echoes of the slave auctions of the past? I don’t go there, since the players selected in the 1st round become instant millionaires — they’re not slaves, obviously — but there’s something to the comparison.

When a player is selected, networks like ABC, ESPN, and the NFL Network show instant video highlights, over which “experts” intone whether the pick was wise or unwise, an overpay or a steal, and so on. Each player has a “tale of the tape” with all the player’s stats, including height, weight, arm length, speed in the 40-yard dash, even wrist size! The coverage is exhaustive—and exhausting, especially if you’re not a fan.

If only America took its wars as seriously as it took NFL football. If only events in Gaza were covered with the same objectivity and attention to detail as the draft. Given the media resources expended on it, you’d think the NFL draft was the lifeblood of America, the linchpin of our democracy. Perhaps it is?

With legalized betting, you can now bet on when a player will be drafted. Again, those odds are carefully calculated and supported with reams of data. NFL owners love all this legal betting—it puts a ton of money in their pockets. Just don’t read all the fine print about how America has more gambling addicts than ever.

Football remains #1 in America (along with the Pentagon, I suppose). At so many colleges and universities, the most richly compensated and often most powerful person is the football coach. A fortunate professor with tenure might make $100,000 a year as the football coach takes home several million dollars. Who says America’s students aren’t learning the right lessons at college?

Everything about major American sports like the NFL has been corporatized and monetized. Despite that, I still enjoy following “my” team, don’t ask me why, even as I marvel at the excess of America’s new national pastime of football. Call it a guilty pleasure, something that gets my mind off atrocities and all the other violent excesses of America. I’m just another member of the hoi polloi in the Colosseum, waiting for my bread and circuses. Next up: the Lions take on the Bears as the Eagles fight the Seahawks. Let the games begin!

Bears against the Lions—Bring it on! (AI-generated image)

A Grim Reminder About Gaza

W.J. Astore

100 Kilotons Is Roughly Seven Hiroshimas

The annihilation of Gaza is staggering.

Israel has dropped more than 100,000 tons of bombs on Gaza. That’s 100+ kilotons. The Hiroshima bomb was roughly 15 kilotons. That means the small area of Gaza has been punished by bombing that is the equivalent in explosive force to seven Hiroshimas.

More than 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza are confirmed dead; the actual number of dead may be twice or three times that number. The number of wounded is likely more than 100,000. (Who can say, exactly, given the level of destruction and disruption in Gaza?)

How is this level of destruction in any way justifiable or defensible?

Gaza is already almost destroyed. The Israeli government’s intent is clear: after rendering Gaza uninhabitable, the Palestinians remaining there will be pushed out, displaced, removed. Or they will die, in place, from more bombing as well as starvation and disease.

The U.S. government has enabled this by supplying Israel all the bombs it needs to pulverize Gaza. The U.S. government has also provided diplomatic cover as well as military protection as Israel implements its final solution to the Gaza question.

Some claim this isn’t genocide because Israel isn’t marching Palestinians to gas chambers. But there are many forms of genocide, many ways to kill massive numbers of people.

In The History and Sociology on Genocide (1990), Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn define genocide as “a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group, as that group and membership in it are defined by the perpetrator.”

One-sided mass killing: yes.

Intent to destroy a group: yes.

Gaza and its people are being destroyed before our very eyes. A large part of the effort is being funded directly or indirectly by U.S. taxpayers. Yet we are told it is all the fault of Hamas. That Hamas is making the Israeli government kill and wound hundreds of thousands of people.

One thing is certain: The Israeli government couldn’t perpetrate this genocide without massive military support from the United States.

Perhaps one day, as Omar El Akkad wrote, “everyone will have always been against this” [the ongoing genocide in Gaza]. The question remains: Why now are so many, especially in the Israeli and U.S. governments, still eagerly perpetrating and defending this?

Pope Francis and His Legacy

W.J. Astore

Reforming the Catholic Church

I woke to the news that Pope Francis had died at the age of 88. Francis had qualities that I admired, including his lack of pomp and his support of the disadvantaged. As Caitlin Johnstone notes, Francis was an advocate for the Palestinians. He was known as a “liberal” pope, so my guess is that we’ll soon see an old-school conservative elected as the new pope.

Pope Francis (Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images)

I was raised Catholic, getting confirmed back in 1979, but I’m very much a lapsed one today. I think the Church should allow female priests and should not persist in upholding chastity for the hierarchy. I think the Church should speak out far more strongly against genocidal nuclear weapons and warfare in general. I think the Church should use its great wealth and power to ease the suffering of people around the world. And I know all this is not going to happen in an institution dedicated to its own survival.

There are, of course, many “good” priests, “good” sisters, committed to charity and guided by the teachings of Christ, but those who are bumped upstairs, who become the bishops and cardinals of the Church, are often those who are most committed to the trappings of power. They are the most political, the most worldly, the most vulnerable to vainglory and sin, especially the sin of pride and the lust for power.

Perhaps a new pope will carry on the legacy of Francis, but something tells me that the College of Cardinals is going to coalesce behind a traditionalist, a symbol of orthodoxy. There will be no Vatican III, no fresh opening of the Church, no revolutionary spirit. 

After Francis I see regression, not reformation, and it makes me sad to type that.

The DOGE Is All Wrong

W.J. Astore

You can’t do a wrong thing the right way

During World War II, the Nazi system of extermination camps was fairly efficient. Relatively small death camps like Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka killed an astonishing number of people, more than 1.6 million and nearly all Jews, quickly and efficiently. If there were a Nazi DOGE, I suppose these death camps may have won “efficiency” awards from it. They stripped the incoming victims of all their valuables and then killed virtually all of them. The loot stolen by the SS was then distributed, again fairly efficiently.

Yet, conducting a genocide, a mass murder, a horrendous atrocity, efficiently is nothing to praise. Right?

Today, America doesn’t need a government that wages wars more efficiently around the globe. We don’t need more efficient genocidal nuclear ICBMs. We don’t need more efficient weapons delivery to Israel so that Gaza can be leveled and its people murdered or displaced from their land.

What we need is an effective government that does the right thing. 

The DOGE associated with Elon Musk can’t seem to recognize that you can’t do a wrong thing the right way. If you’re doing a wrong thing, you must stop doing it. Period.

Genocidal nuclear missiles are wrong. Stop building them.

Genocide in Gaza is wrong. Stop supplying Israel with weapons.

Waging war for peace is wrong. Stop doing it.

That said, efficiency does have some relevance. Consider the Pentagon. It has failed seven audits in a row. It is grossly inefficient even as it continues to be ineffective. How do you rein in a vast government bureaucracy that lacks both efficiency and effectiveness?

You don’t do it by rewarding it with more money. But that’s exactly what President Trump, Elon Musk, and Congress are doing. They all seek a trillion dollar war budget. They all want the Pentagon to grow and then grow some more.

If a sprawling bureaucracy is out of control, you must cut its budget in a big way, forcing it to confront its own waste, fraud, abuse, and related forms of corruption. That said, efficiency is again less important than effectiveness. Is the Pentagon effectively defending America? If not, how do you make it more effective?

Pentagon misadventures around the world are making Americans less safe. Incessant warfare is strengthening authoritarianism and militarism in America while weakening democracy and hollowing out infrastructure and finances.

A more effective Pentagon is one that would focus strictly on defending America proper while upholding the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law. After achieving that, one could then focus on efficiency. A Pentagon budget cut roughly in half would lead to a more effective defense of America. A much smaller Pentagon budget could then be more easily audited, leading to greater efficiency.

Committing murderous wrongs in an efficient way is nothing to celebrate. Didn’t the Nazis already provide us with the most horrifying example of this?

Revive Democracy!

W.J. Astore

Replacing an older suicide vest with a newer one is not a sound plan

We are losing the struggle for the heart and soul of our country.

That much is apparent by the government’s embrace of genocide in Gaza, its boasts of trillion dollar war budgets, and its pride in global weapons sales, which the U.S. dominates (more than 40% of the global arms trade consists of weapons made in the USA).

I’ve been involved in efforts to criticize America’s “merchants of death” and to challenge America’s love affair with the military-industrial complex (MIC), but seemingly nothing we say or do changes the abusive and sociopathic power structure in DC. I suppose that’s none too surprising, given the power of the MICIMATT and the persuasiveness of propaganda.

Merchants of Death

Still, we must persist in these efforts, bringing a positive message, which I think should focus on the revival of democracy by reinvesting in America while rejecting militarism and restoring peace. Peace should be America’s normal, not war and constant preparations for the same. Yet “peace” seems to be the hardest word, one that’s rarely spoken in the halls of power.

Anyhow, in 2022 I wrote the following email to likeminded colleagues; I hope it’s worth sharing. As I think about it, three years later, I marvel at the death of idealism in America and the triumph of militarism. When more than half of the federal government’s discretionary spending goes to the military and weaponry, despite the Pentagon’s failure to pass audit after audit for seven years running, we must conclude we are one sick society.

The question is: How do we restore ourselves to health? Because I for one do not believe that war is the health of the state. 

*****

Written in 2022 to colleagues seeking to reform the military-industrial complex (MIC).

When I was a college student in the early 1980s, and in Air Force ROTC, I wrote against the Reagan “defense” buildup. Caspar Weinberger, he of the “Cap the knife” handle for cost-cutting, became “Cap the ladle” as Reagan’s SecDef, ladling money in huge amounts to the Pentagon. History is repeating itself again as the Biden administration prepares to ladle $813 billion (and more) to the Pentagon.

How do we stop this? Of course, we must recognize (as I’m sure we all do) what we’re up against. Both political parties are pro-military and, in the main, pro-war. Our economy is based on a militarized Keynesianism and our culture is increasingly militarized. Mainstream Democrats, seemingly forever afraid of being labeled “weak” on defense, are at pains to be more pro-military than the Republicans. Biden, in Poland, echoed the words of Obama and other past presidents, declaring the U.S. military to be “the finest fighting force” in history. Think about that boast. Think about how Biden added that the nation owes the troops big. This is a sign of a sick culture.

Ike gave his MIC speech in 1961, and for 61 years the MIC has been winning. Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early ‘90s, the MIC held its own; after 9/11, it went into warp speed and is accelerating. To cite Scotty from Star Trek: “And at Warp 10, we’re going nowhere mighty fast.”

We need a reformation of our institutions; we need a restoration of our democracy; we need a reaffirmation of the U.S. Constitution; we need to remember who we are, or perhaps who we want to be, as a people.

Do we really want to be the world’s largest dealer of arms? Do we really want to spend a trillion or more dollars, each and every year, on wars and weapons, more than the next dozen or so countries combined, most of which are allies of ours? (“Yes” is seemingly the answer here, for both Democrats and Republicans.) Is that really the best way to serve the American people? Humanity itself?

Consider plans to “invest” in “modernizing” America’s nuclear triad. (Notice the words used here by the MIC.) What does this really mean? To me, it means we plan on spending nearly $2 trillion over the next 30 years to replace an older suicide vest with a newer one, except this suicide vest will take out humanity itself, as well as most other life forms on our planet.

As Ike said in 1953, “This is not a way of life at all … it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

We will need the broadest possible coalition to tackle this outrage against civilization and humanity. That’s why I applaud these efforts, even as I encourage all of us to enlist and recruit more people to join our ranks.

My father enlisted in the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1935 to do his bit for his family and his nation. He fought forest fires in Oregon and later became a firefighter after serving in the Army during World War II. That was the last formally declared war that America fought. It was arguably the last morally justifiable war this country has fought, waged by citizens who donned a uniform, not “warriors” who are told that the nation owes them big.

In “It’s A Wonderful Life,” Jimmy Stewart, a true war hero, played a man who never fought in WW2, who stayed at home and helped ordinary people even as his younger brother Harry went off to war and earned the Medal of Honor. Yet the movie doesn’t celebrate Harry’s war heroism; it celebrates the nobility, decency, and humility of George Bailey.

How do we get back to that America? The America from before the MIC, that celebrated decency and kindness and humanitarianism?

Yes, I know. It’s just a Frank Capra movie, and America has never been a perfect shining city. All I’m saying is we need more of that spirit if we are to prevail.

Beware of Militarism and Nationalism

W.J. Astore

Responses from Readers

I was going through old notes and came across emails written to me from 2009 in response to an article I wrote for TomDispatch about militarism in America and its many dangers. (When I tell readers that I often learn as much from them as they do from me, I mean it.)

Without further ado, four “letters” from readers, vintage 2009:

I enjoyed very much your article on patriots and the flag. 
Out here in Wyoming we get a real dose of it. It bothers me
a great deal to see political candidates wrap themselves in
the flag and even use the flag as advertising items. Many
people have a flag on their driveway that hangs there until it
falls apart and they are proclaiming they are patriots.
I served in the army and the Wyoming National Guard
and I feel that I do not need my motives scrutinized. I feel that
my saying “bring the troops home” is supporting them and not
wanting any other young people maimed or killed should
speak for itself. Keep up the good work.

The next letter highlighted the “cult of hyper-patriotism” that Bush/Cheney in particular were cultivating:

Suffice it to say that you have touched on a number of issues that I strongly agree with. The cult of hyper-patriotism that seems to have sprung up since the early to mid 80s seems to sucking the marrow from America’s bones, rather than strengthening and replenishing it. Too many of our fellow citizens are only familiar with the first half of Carl Schurz’s quote: “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.”

Another reader, an Army veteran, questioned all the “thank you for your service” hoopla:

I cannot say how we arrived at the point we are today, regarding some of the issues you raised, but we have reached a point that I think is not right. And, unfortunately, raising questions about this draws rapid condemnation.

The extra thing, that your article did not mention, which I find unsettling, is that we seem to have become a citizenry of gestures, rather than resolve (and Gary Cooper was all about being resolute). As if plastering the trunk lid of one’s car with yellow ribbon magnets and ‘Freedom isn’t free’ stickers is somehow just as valid as actually serving the country. As if the ostentatious example of thanking soldiers one coincidentally meets in the airport for their service makes up for staying home oneself. I volunteered and served my three years in the Army (and didn’t like military life at all, so left when my enlistment was up), but can’t imagine why anyone would thank me for simply doing my duty, and without knowing whether I did my duty well.

In one of my favorite letters, a reader noted the melding of sports and the military along with Hollywood’s predilection for big men with even bigger guns:

I just read your essay “What Happened to Gary Cooper” on Middle East Online and loved it. As a screenwriter in California, I’m often in meetings where some twenty something “exec” speaks lovingly about big men with big guns. I try to steer the discussion to a different kind of hero, the reluctant kind that solve their problems with keen insight instead of quick trigger fingers. I’m sure you can imagine how those suggestions are treated.

And also, as a former professional football player and lifelong sports fan, I’m also very interested in the melding of military and sports cultures. Watch an NFL game and it’s readily apparent. Pregame shows with military guards, monstrous flags, reverential tributes to the troops overseas, etc.

And always the flyovers! A few years back I was at an Angels World Series game with a friend. A stealth bomber thundered overhead right before the first pitch and the crowd went wild. My friend said he had tears in his eyes, and I said, just think how many tears are shed by the people whose countries those things flyover every single day. He thought I was joking. I wasn’t.

These reader comments from 2009 could have been made yesterday—or today. Steroidal displays of hyper-patriotism and exotic weaponry continue apace in allegedly peace-loving America as the president boasts of trillion-dollar war budgets.

A final comment from another reader:

I served in the US Coast Guard back when it wasn’t fashionable to be in the military. I remember having garbage thrown at me from passing cars when on liberty from the Academy. I don’t desire a return to those days but I firmly believe that the pendulum has gone too far the other way.

I love my country as much as anyone but I really wish that they’d stop singing ‘God Bless America’ during the 7th inning stretch and replace it with “America the Beautiful”, prefereably all verses but at least the first two. For the past 8 years, I’ve been moved to tears when singing te second verse as it ends,

“America! America! God mend thine ev’ry flaw;

Confirm thy soul in self control, thy liberty in law! “

We could use a bit more self control.

These comments come from men who at first glance might be seen as “conservative” or even as “deplorable” by some sectors of society. This is deeply unfortunate. I’m not sure how else to put this, so I’ll just say it: these men would not be out of step with the efforts of groups like Code Pink. We need to come together.

In America there is a “silent majority” who are tired of vapid patriotism, rabid nationalism, and endless wars. How we activate that silent majority—how we get them to stand up, to march, to declare “Enough is enough!” is a question for the ages.

Trumpus I

W.J. Astore

An Old Penny Teaches Me a Lesson

A few months ago, I sorted through some old pennies. I know: Who does this anymore? Aren’t pennies obsolete? Does anybody still bend down to pick up pennies? 

I found an old Lincoln “wheat” penny from 1944 (I used to see a lot more “wheat” pennies when I was young), and somehow, somewhere, I picked up an Indian head penny from 1888 (in fair condition at best). But the one that most surprised me was a Canadian penny from 1943 featuring King George VI.

My King George VI penny had this inscription on the front: GEORGIUS VI D:G: REX ET IND IMP. I confess I had to look that up. What it means is this:

George VI, by the grace of God, King and Emperor of India

And it immediately occurred to me that this is the type of coin Trump would want, though of course I doubt Trump would want his profile on a penny. Anyhow, I could imagine a big Trump coin (gold, naturally), with an inscription like this:

Trumpus I, by the grace of God, King and Emperor of Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal

It got me to laughing as a way to hide my tears.

Anyhow, just four years after my George VI penny was minted, India was on its way to independence, recognizing it didn’t need a British monarch to rule over it. Who knew India would gain its independence so quickly after World War II? Certainly not the British monarchy.

History is full of surprises, and events can often move far more quickly than we think possible. I hope that means that America will free itself of Trump as quickly as India sloughed off George VI. Who needs a wannabe monarch like Trump?

Let’s hope Trump’s image never adorns official U.S. coinage. After all, his image is already on far too many “commemorative” coins that he sells to his admirers and followers.

You can buy ten of these “coins” at Amazon for $16.99. Good grief!

Trumpwood

W.J. Astore

A Twisted and Bizarre Version of Hollywood

Are we living through a nightmarish simulacrum of reality, a Hollywood without happy endings? If so, let’s call it “Trumpwood.”

You may know that Donald Trump, who’s appeared in movies and had his own popular TV show, The Apprentice (where his signature line was, “You’re fired!”), has his very own star on Hollywood’s walk of fame (and shame). It’s rather amazing to recall that Trump was once seen as an entertaining billionaire buffoon, a friend to the Clintons, among other liberal A-listers. The relatable billionaire, so to speak, whose vulgar tastes ran to golden toilets. As they say, who cares if it’s true—go with the legend!

He’s a star! A star!

Trumpwood, I’d argue, is a twisted and bizarre version of Hollywood, where the Oval Office is just a set to him, where the world is just a stage where he manifests all his hatred and trauma and egotism. The rest of us are just bit players (or scenery, easily changeable and discardable) in his psychodrama.

It’s all show business to The Donald, all centered on himself, where he is (at least in his own mind) the ultimate A-lister. He is the “very stable genius,” the most powerful man in the world with the biggest nuclear button, the man who craves attention but who also demands obedience. Adoration is what fuels him. Without adoring masses, without his trumped-up towers to himself, he would wither away.

Trump is the ultimate taker, feeding off the adoration as well as the hatred of the rest of us. I wish we could ignore him, but he is the president, after all, so we can’t just wish him into the cornfield.

Perhaps in 2028, assuming we last that long, Americans might care to elect a public servant rather than a self-centered scene-stealing “star” as president. A man can dream.

P.S. Check out Tom Engelhardt’s latest at TomDispatch, which helped to inspire these thoughts of mine.

“And Forever in Peace May You Wave”

W.J. Astore

The grand old flag is no more

A patriotic song I was taught in my youth was “You’re A Grand Old Flag,” written by George M. Cohan in 1906. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard it, but it flashed into my mind the other day because of its lyrics, especially the refrain:

You’re a grand old flag,
You’re a high-flying flag,
And forever in peace may you wave.
You’re the emblem of the land I love,
The home of the free and the brave.
Ev’ry heart beats true
‘Neath the Red, White and Blue,
Where there’s never a boast or brag.
But should auld acquaintance be forgot,
Keep your eye on the grand old flag.

Forever in peace? I second that sentiment, except America is constantly at war or preparing for war. An America that doesn’t boast or brag? Amen to that, except presidents from Bush to Obama to Biden to Trump boast and brag about America having the world’s best and strongest military, with Obama adding that America has the best military in all human history. How’s that for a boast?

Cohan’s song, of course, is nakedly patriotic, with its references to marches and pride. Yet even this stanza is more resonant of democracy than America’s actions today:

Here’s a land with a million soldiers,
That’s if we should need ’em,
We’ll fight for freedom!

The song speaks of U.S. military potential (“a million soldiers”) but adds only if we should need them, in which case they’ll fight for freedom.

When was the last time the U.S. military truly fought for freedom? World War II, I reckon.

This song’s references to peace, to humility, and to fighting only if we should need to in the defense of freedom, mark it as a true museum piece. How do we recover that version of America?