Author: wjastore

Creator of Bracing Views. Contributor to TomDispatch, Truthout, HNN, Alternet, Huffington Post, Antiwar, and other sites. Retired AF lieutenant colonel and professor of history. Senior fellow, Eisenhower Media Network

Remember When the Balanced Budget Amendment Was A Thing?

$37 Trillion in Debt and Counting

BILL ASTORE

JUN 30, 2025

With the U.S. national debt sitting at $37 trillion, it’s hard to imagine a time when Congress argued for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Remember when Republicans had a reputation for fiscal conservatism?

According to the non-partisan CBO, President Trump’s big beautiful bill will add another $3.3 trillion in debt over the next decade. At the same time, the bill cuts health care to poor people. This from the New York Times:

G.O.P. Bill Has $1.1 Trillion in Health Cuts and 11.8 Million Losing Care, C.B.O. Says

Analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that Republicans’ new version of the legislation would make far deeper cuts and lead to more people becoming uninsured than previous proposals.

Who needs health insurance, am I right?

Yearly interest on the national debt is now higher than the Pentagon budget, which is truly saying (and spending) a lot.

Where is all the money going? Leaving aside the cost of servicing the national debt, most of discretionary spending goes to the Pentagon, Homeland Security, and similar forces of aggression and repression. New nuclear weapons, for example, may cost $2 trillion over the next 30 years. A misnamed “golden dome” (leaky sieve is more accurate) allegedly to protect America against nuclear missile attacks may cost $500 billion or more over the next decade or two. And nothing costs as much as foreign wars, as we learned from the disastrous Iraq and Afghan Wars, which may end up adding $8 trillion to the national debt when all the bills come due.

While achieving a balanced budget isn’t easy, there are two easy ways to come closer:

  1. Tax the rich.
  2. Stop making war, downsize the empire, and focus the U.S. military on national defense and defense alone.

Option (1) is out since the rich own the government. (Welcome to Plutocracy USA.) Option (2) is also out since the military-industrial-congressional complex is the fourth branch of government and arguably the most powerful. All presidents appease it, whether their names are Bush or Biden, Obama or Trump.

So, Congress and the President do what they always do: Serve the rich and kowtow to the MICC, the National (In)Security State. Any “balancing” to be done with the federal budget will be done on the tired backs of the poor and disadvantaged. They have no lobbies, no money, no say.

Can the working classes pull America up by their collective bootstraps? America’s workers have achieved miracles before, but this is too big of an ask even for them.

Donald Trump, Insulter-in-Chief

Teenage Boys Playing “Risk” Lead America!

BILL ASTORE

JUN 27, 2025

When I was in high school, my friends and I would get together and play “Risk,” the game of world domination. It was an excuse to hang out, to have fun, and especially to trade insults as we rolled the dice and moved our “armies” around the board to vanquish one another.

Trump understands this mentality—the mentality of adolescent teens trading insults for fun, bonding over shared putdowns. Never did I or my friends think, however, that juvenile and puerile insults should become the foundation of politics and governance in America. That was Trump’s peculiar “genius”: he has become America’s Insulter-in-Chief. 

Consider this recent post from Trump’s Truth Social account:

Now, my teenage self is smiling or laughing even as I read these insults. Of course they’re outrageous, deceptive, irresponsible, juvenile, inaccurate, add your own descriptors here. Yet Trump recognizes that they work, especially with his followers, whose main objective often appears to be “owning the libs.”

To Trump, all of this is par for the course. His “genius” in 2015-16, when he first ran, was recognizing that his Republican challengers were, as we say in the military, whiskey deltas, often deserving of insults and contempt. He recognizes too in 2025 that the Democrats similarly are weak, are corrupt, and therefore targets of opportunity for the most withering insults, no matter how exaggerated.

Predictably, more than a few of his insults are patently absurd. Israel has no bigger champion than Chuck Schumer, yet Trump labels him as a “Great Palestinian Senator.” Absurd as that is, it’s a reminder to Chuck to get back in line, to continue kowtowing to Israel, which, of course, he doesn’t need much reminding to do.

Best of all, perhaps, is Trump’s reference to Dirty Harry’s “Make My Day!” tagline, which Ronald Reagan also employed. Again, we as teenagers were fond of quoting our favorite lines from various Clint Eastwood movies, and I can still recite many from memory. (“Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?”)

Trump’s insults resonate in part because America’s so-called best and brightest have so often failed or betrayed the working classes or sold themselves out to the highest bidder. And most everyone deserves to be taken down a peg or two now and again. But, to state the obvious, there should be something more to our political scene than insults and name-calling.

Too often, U.S. politics and foreign affairs today resemble a bunch of 16-year-olds ragging on and insulting each other while hatching plots for world dominance. It might make for a fun “Risk” game, but it doesn’t make for a healthy world.

The 12-Day War?

Israel, Iran, and the U.S. Theater of Death

BILL ASTORE

JUN 24, 2025

Last night, President Trump declared the so-called 12-Day War between Israel and Iran is over, though the president admitted this AM that both countries have already broken the ceasefire. Still, there’s a chance the war won’t escalate further, which is good news for the world. It even led the president to bless the entire world! And that’s progress, since God’s blessings are usually restricted to the USA.

GOD BLESS THE WORLD!

More than a few people have suggested we’ve been watching an elaborate form of theater as Israel, Iran, and the U.S. have traded deadly strikes. If so, even that worries me, since theater among other things requires smart actors, sound direction, plenty of rehearsal, savvy scriptwriters, and talented crews. I’m not convinced our version of war theater is in skilled hands.

Meanwhile, Gaza continues to suffer, pushed off the front page by the Iran “theater.”

*****

In other news, I recently got a new phone number; its previous owner, a certain Thomas, it seems, signed up for alerts from AIPAC. It’s been enlightening to see this tiny manifestation of AIPAC influence over U.S. policy. Here are a few automated text messages I’ve received:

Thomas, we are outraged and horrified by the terrorist attack & murder last night in DC. Full AIPAC statement here: https://aip.ac/78a

Emergency Alert: Israel is striking Iran’s nuclear program. Tell Congress that America must stand with our ally https://itbl.co/xlF~mjXXI

Fordow is gone! Tell Congress you support the U.S. destroying the Iranian nuclear program. https://itbl.co/xlF~eah1c

If you’re seeking to combat AIPAC, learn from them. It helps if you have loads of money and you can convince Christian evangelists that your fate is tied to the Second Coming of Christ.

Update: As of 8:00AM EST, Trump is announcing the ceasefire is back in effect:

President Trump in his latest post on Truth Social insisted that the ceasefire between Israel and Iran was in effect after earlier rebuking both sides for violating the truce by launching fresh attacks.

“ISRAEL is not going to attack Iran. All planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly ‘Plane Wave’ to Iran,” Trump wrote.

“Nobody will be hurt, the Ceasefire is in effect!” he added.

A friendly “plane wave”? More theater?

I’ll Slug You, and If You Resist, I’ll Slug You Harder

U.S. Strategy in Iran

BILL ASTORE

JUN 22, 2025

U.S. messaging to Iran, courtesy of President Trump, is quite simple: We slugged you (with our bombing attacks on three nuclear sites in your country), and if you don’t like it, we’ll slug you again, even harder, much, much harder.

Iran’s only real choice: “unconditional surrender,” according to the president.

Well, it’s a strategy, I suppose, the one of the abuser, the bully. Do what I want, else you’ll get slugged. Try to fight back, I’ll slug you much much harder. Oh, by the way, I believe in peace. And you can have peace by totally capitulating to me.

Another way of looking at or labeling this stategy: Bombing for Bibi. Yes, I know it’s not just Bibi Netanyahu behind it all. But he’s the chief flatterer, the skilled string-puller, the master manipulator of Trump. Not that it’s entirely hard to manipulate a narcissist who’s driven by money and consumed by his own ego.

So, we have to look to Iran to show a measure of restraint, since the U.S. and Israel won’t. If Iran chooses to fight, especially to hit back at U.S. targets in the region, all bets are off as our country stumbles into what could become World War III.

As Jimmy Dore put it today, No matter who you vote for, you get John McCain. A warmonger. Someone proud to joke about bombing Iran—and crazy enough to do it. Does it really matter if the warmonger is named Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden—or Donald Trump?

Congress, no surprise, is almost entirely behind Trump’s attack, despite some griping and sniping from the sidelines. Congress may complain, but it’s just posturing. That’s how you get reckless wars of choice that are unsupported by the American people.

Oh well. “We love you, God,” as Trump said last night as he announced the bombings. I never learned in CCD that God loves bombs and bombing; I must have been sleeping or absent for that one. Thou shalt kill, right?

U.S. Strikes Iranian Nuclear Sites

War Finds A Way

BILL ASTORE

JUN 21, 2025

President Trump announced tonight that the U.S. has bombed three nuclear sites in Iran. After these attacks, he’s now asking for peace.

That the attacks were coming was obvious. Even Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was brought firmly into line before the attacks. As the Downing Street Memo said about the Iraq War, the intelligence was fixed around the policy. In Iraq, the policy was a regime-change war; with Iran, the policy is to destroy nuclear sites and possibly to topple the Iranian government. A predetermined policy determines what is a “fact” and what isn’t.

When you have an empire like the U.S. that devotes so much of its money and resources to the military, and when you have leaders desperate to be seen as “strong” and decisive, this is what happens. Military attacks followed by declarations that America seeks peace. War for peace. It makes no sense, but there you go.

Cui bono? Who benefits? Certainly, Israel in its ongoing efforts to dominate the region. Israel’s influence over U.S. foreign policy is remarkable. There was no way Trump was not going to bomb Iran, given the push from Israel to do so.

What happens next, I don’t know. But I did think that this was exactly what Trump would do—bomb Iran—because it’s always what the U.S. does.

Somewhere, in perhaps some hell, John McCain is singing a ditty about bombing Iran. People may have made fun of him, but the man predicted the future—and the future is now.

Have bombers, will bomb.

Demonizing the Opposition

The Abyss Beckons

BILL ASTORE

JUN 15, 2025

Demonizing the opposition is a conduit to murderous crimes. There is no excuse for it.

I remember hearing Judge Jeanine Pirro refer to Democrats as “demoncrats” and “the enemy within.” Some Democrats accused a sitting president, Donald Trump, of being in league with Vladimir Putin and Russia, a traitor to his country. (Just as Satan was traitorous to God, Trump is portrayed by some as a malevolent force, disloyal to America.)

The result of such malicious rhetoric is obvious: A Democratic official, Melissa Hortman, assassinated in Minnesota along with her husband. Another Democratic official and his wife severely wounded. Two separate attempts on Donald Trump’s life.

Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark were killed in a politically motivated shooting.

Words matter. Viewing opponents in demonic terms, as savages, as terrorists, as “other,” enables and generates violent crimes. In the mind of perpetrators, it even “justifies” the crimes, for who wishes to tolerate the presence of the demonic among us?

A friend and colleague, historian David Lovejoy, wrote a fine paper, “Satanizing the American Indian,” for the New England Quarterly in 1994. It became far easier for European colonists to America to kill indigenous peoples when they viewed them as demonic savages. Especially when this view was allegedly supported, even sanctified by Biblical passages.

Democracy thrives on reasoned discourse and tolerance of dissent. Democracy dies when opponents are viewed as demonic and therefore worthy of the harshest actions, including murder.

Whatever your political, religious, or other affiliations may be, we should all agree to treat each other with respect and dignity. And if you think a person is unworthy of your respect, walk away. Or express your dissent in factual and measured terms. There is no need to reach for the demonic, for that way only opens a door to the abyss, whether in you or in someone else.

Israel Gets What It Wants

All They Are Saying Is Give War A Chance

BILL ASTORE

JUN 13, 2025

I awoke to the news that Israel has bombed Iran, focusing on nuclear enrichment facilities and military targets. For the U.S. and Israel, war always finds a way.

The U.S. is claiming that Israel alone is bombing Iran, but of course Israel is using U.S. weaponry, intelligence and logistical support, and political cover at the United Nations. The planes may be Israeli, but the U.S. government is complicit in the attacks, just as the U.S. government is complicit in genocide in Gaza.

At Eunomia, Daniel Larison has an informative article on the “insanity” of the Israeli/U.S. attack on Iran. A few points come to mind here:

+ Israel is allowed to have 90-200 nuclear bombs, but no other country in the region is allowed to have any. I guess that’s because Israel is so clearly peace-loving?

+ Iran is the latest target of Israel’s quest for regional dominance. As far back as 2003, if not earlier, Israel (and U.S. neocon “warriors”) always wanted to go to Tehran. Baghdad was supposed to be both a cakewalk and a stepping-stone. Two decades and several disasters later, these “real men” finally achieved their dream of war with Iran.

+ The success of Israel in getting the U.S. government and military to do its bidding is nothing short of phenomenal. Iraq? Greatly weakened. Syria? Greatly weakened. The same with Libya. And now it’s Iran’s turn to be “greatly weakened,” i.e. bludgeoned with bombs made in the USA.

+ Iran will likely strike back. U.S. media will frame these attacks as “unprovoked” and “anti-semitic.” See this grimly amusing article by Caitlin Johnstone about future headlines at the New York Times.

+ One thing is certain: Israel, like the U.S., has an irrational belief in the efficacy of bombing, an efficacy largely disproven by military history.

+ One might recall how the U.S. conspired with Britain in 1953 to overthrow Iran’s democratically-elected leader, replacing him with the Shah, leading to 25 years of a repressive police state until the Shah was finally overthrown. I wonder how Americans would feel if Iran conspired in 1953 to overthrow Dwight D. Eisenhower as U.S. president, replacing him with a petty dictator who ruled through secret police?

Chickenhawk Graham says “Game on.”

Here are a few responses by prominent U.S. politicians to Israel’s attacks on Iran. I just love the “game on” reference by Senator Lindsey Graham. Has there ever been a more abject and delusional chickenhawk than him?

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said, minutes after reports of the operation began, “Proud to stand with Israel.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) soon followed, saying, “Game on. Pray for Israel.”

Cotton later added that “We back Israel to the hilt, all the way,” adding that if “the ayatollahs harm a single American, that will be the end of the ayatollahs.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), said “Israel IS right—and has a right—to defend itself!”

Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said, “We stand with Israel tonight and pray for the safety of its people and the success of this unilateral, defensive action.”

“I am also praying for the brave U.S. service members in the Middle East who keep America safe — Iran would be foolish to attack the United States,” Risch continued.

U.S. members of Congress seem to think they swore an oath to Israel, not the U.S. Constitution. And, given all the money they receive from AIPAC and similar pro-Israel lobbying groups, maybe they have sold their souls to Israel.

Once again, all they are saying is give war a chance.

Golden Dome Idiocy

A “shield” against nuclear attack makes nuclear war more likely

BILL ASTORE

JUN 09, 2025

Donald Trump has a dream: a “golden dome” over America to defend the country against nuclear missiles. It’s a repeat of Ronald Reagan’s dream, the Strategic Defense Initiative, nicknamed “Star Wars” after the movie. The problem is that the dream represents a nightmare.

How so? Golden Dome would be dangerously escalatory, wildly expensive, and unlikely to work as a “shield” to America. It is worse than a mistake: it is a crime. It represents a massive theft from those who hunger and suffer in America. As Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower said in 1953, wasting enormous resources on weapons systems is no way of life at all. It is humanity crucifying itself on a cross of iron. Crucifixion is not made more pleasant when the cross is golden.

A new golden idol occupies his mind

Put differently, the Golden Dome is a golden idol, a false god, one that by making a massive nuclear strike more likely endangers all of us and God’s creation.

Golden Dome is a grotesque example of makework militarism and warfare as welfare for weapons makers. Though it’s unlikely to work, if it did (partially) it would make a massive nuclear strike more likely, not less, endangering the world with the ecocidal terror of nuclear winter.

Golden Dome and the so-called investment in America’s nuclear triad are both examples of socio-technological madness–America’s leaders are like the mutants in “Beneath the Planet of the Apes,” worshipping the bombs that twisted them and which can only destroy what’s left of civilization.

Some Christians today await the apocalypse when Christ is supposed to return–but the most likely apocalypse features not the second coming of a God-man but a third world war featuring bomb-gods of thermonuclear destruction.

As Daniel Ellsberg once noted, U.S. nuclear attack plans in the early 1960s envisioned 600 million killed, or 100 Holocausts (before we knew such an attack would lead to nuclear winter). We’re lucky this insanity never came to pass. The only sane policy is to cancel Golden Dome and end “investment” in a new nuclear triad. Disarmament, not rearmament, is what’s needed.

*****

The Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space has released a statement against Golden Dome that you can read here. You can add your name to the statement, as I have. Here are some bullet points released along with the statement:

  • Golden Dome is financially reckless and unsustainable. Early cost estimates range from $550 billion to several trillion dollars over two decades. This dwarfs even the Pentagon’s annual budget and adds to the US’s $37 trillion national debt—a price tag that makes the project fiscally indefensible.
  • Experts overwhelmingly agree that 100% effective missile interception is a fantasy, especially against complex attacks involving decoys, hypersonic missiles, and maneuverable warheads. Even Israel’s Iron Dome has been bypassed by more rudimentary drone and missile attacks.
  • Golden Dome includes space-based interceptors—effectively weaponizing the Earth’s orbit and triggering an arms race. This violates the spirit of the Outer Space Treaty and pushes nations like China and Russia to accelerate space weapons development.
  • By giving the illusion of first-strike survivability, it runs counter to the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine that has prevented so far a nuclear holocaust and incentivizes other powers to retain or expand their nuclear arsenals, blocking disarmament efforts permanently.
  • Thousands of rocket launches for satellite interceptors would further damage the ozone layer, could generate dangerous orbital debris (Kessler Syndrome), and will harm our already fragile space environment.
  • The only guaranteed winners of Golden Dome are weapons giants like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Palantir, which stand to profit enormously regardless of the system’s effectiveness or risks.
  • The trillions funneled into Golden Dome could be used for urgent domestic priorities—such as healthcare, infrastructure, climate action, and education, directly benefiting millions of Americans.

In short, Golden Dome is a massive, dangerous, and futile vanity project, cloaked in patriotism but driven by profit, politics, and illusion.

America’s Unrepresentative Government

How can ordinary Americans regain political agency?

BILL ASTORE

JUN 06, 2025

When you have an unrepresentative government, or, put differently, a government that represents oligarchic interests and corporations, as well as being heavily influenced by lobbyists, domestic and foreign (AIPAC), you get Trump and Congress conspiring to decrease Medicaid, to cut food support for the poor, while funneling more money upward to the very richest Americans.

American workers essentially have no agency, no ability to act in meaningful ways in the political realm. Along with no agency, Americans also have fewer liberties, especially if you should choose to criticize U.S./Israeli policies and otherwise challenge the imperatives of the powerful.

Be careful shouting “Give me liberty or give me death!” in these times. Death may be far easier to achieve.

Hannah Arendt

What is the answer to regaining our agency? In “Between Past and Future,” the political philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote how French resisters to the Nazis during World War II discovered themselves—their true nature—in and through action. In resisting the Nazis, they seized control over their own agency by exercising it in the face of danger. They chose risk, they fought to effect change, they took stands that often meant life or death.

Through action, these resisters lifted themselves out of “normal” time, Arendt argued, entering instead a realm between past and future, a realm of true existence, a present of dynamism, of possibilities, of clarity of commitment.

Political agency is not going to be given back to the people. If we regain it, it will only be by seizing it ourselves, through action, through commitment, through risk-taking, and perhaps most of all through large-scale organized resistance.

Hopefully, that resistance can remain non-violent. I prefer reformation or restoration to revolution, recalling the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn that revolutions unleash the most elemental barbarism.

Genocidal Parallels and Final Solutions

A Grim Reckoning

BILL ASTORE

JUN 01, 2025

At her Substack, Lisa Savage asks whether the “Gaza Hunger Games” we’re witnessing—the concentration of Palestinians there accompanied by slaughter and mass starvation—was the plan all along for Israel and the United States. It got me to thinking, so I wrote a rather longwinded response to Lisa, which I’d like to share with all of you.

Whether it was the plan all along or whether it’s the result of ad hoc decisions over time, one thing is certain: the holocaust in Gaza must be stopped.

*****

Lisa, I’ve taught the Holocaust, and your question reminds me of a debate among historians: Did Hitler and the Nazis always plan to kill all the Jews, or was it the result of ad hoc decisions over time? Scholars still debate this.*

Perhaps the debate is somewhat artificial in the sense that Hitler and the Nazis vilified the Jews, demeaning them, attacking them, dehumanizing them, establishing the conditions for genocide, which were linked to the need to win a war (Jews as an existential enemy that had to be destroyed, even Jewish children, i.e. they were all “guilty”).

The “logic” of genocide sees even children as enemies who must be eliminated (Image of the “Warsaw Ghetto Boy” during World War II)

Something similar is happening with Palestinians in Gaza. I don’t think Israel and the U.S. had a plan all along to concentrate them in Gaza and kill them. But all that’s gone before this has created the preconditions for a final solution to the Gaza question.

When you vilify Palestinians, demean them, attack them, incarcerate them, dehumanize them, you establish the conditions for a genocide. Then you use the excuse of a “war” to drive the most radical solution–elimination–just as the Nazis used the excuse of World War II to eliminate the Jews (who, of course, posed no existential threat to Germany).

Within the Nazi government (and now within the Israeli government), extremists always come to the forefront. Many officials in Nazi Germany wanted to relocate the Jews, not kill them all, or they wanted to exploit them as slave labor before killing them. But the extremists–the ones who just wanted to kill them all–tended to win the argument. They were the most committed, most sure of themselves, the most radical. 

So, what’s happening in Gaza has been the result of long-term dehumanization and propaganda coupled with ad hoc decisions that have run to extremes, because those who are most radical tend to win these “arguments.”

What is truly unconscionable is the eagerness of the U.S. government to provide Israel with all the weapons and diplomatic cover it needs to implement its final solution in Gaza. Whether the president is Biden or Trump, whether Congress is controlled by the Democratic or Republican parties, the policy and result is the same: a blank check to Israel to kill as many Palestinians as they want, justified falsely in “defending” Israel from Hamas.

The Nazis thought or said the Jews were out to destroy them (obviously the Jews were totally incapable of threatening the German war machine) so they tried to destroy the Jews.

The Israeli government says Hamas is out to destroy them (obviously Hamas is totally incapable of threatening the IDF war machine) so they’re trying to destroy the Palestinians.

Genocide is sold as “defensive” and “necessary.”

The parallels are there, yet few people want to see them.

*****

*Addendum: Among Holocaust historians it’s known as the “intentionalist” versus “functionalist” debate, i.e. was it always the Nazis’ intent to kill the Jews, or did it emerge slowly as a function of specific events and decisions?

Some might say, who cares? Dead is dead. Stop the killing!