Category: Society

Refreshing the Tree of Liberty in America

W.J. Astore

How much blood will it take?

Why are progressives so powerless in America? Is there any hope for radical reforms here that favor the 99%? Stimulated by a question from Jeff Moebus, here’s some thoughts on this crucial issue, lightly edited from the comments section of a previous article:

As a kid, I loved to collect stamps, and I still have a small collection

jg moebus

I’m curious, Bill: What do you think the RNC’s Main Goal is?

In any event, given that that is the DNC’s Main Goal [suppressing progressive voices and power within the Democratic Party], why haven’t the Principled Progressives of America formed their own political party so as to give Americans that choice for Systemic Reform come election time?

Is at least part of the problem that a significant number of Americans disagree with and, in some cases, categorically reject the principles, policy proposals, and promises of Progressivism? Which may explain why there are no “Progressives” in Washington, eh?

Bill Astore

Jeff, the RNC seems content to ride the Trump wave, knowing that Trump can be controlled and perhaps coopted as well.

Trump lacks core principles, so I think the RNC’s main goal is to shove Trump in directions that are consistent with RNC imperatives, such as lower taxes on corporations, financial deregulation, and the dismantling of the welfare state and anything that smacks of socialism.

What do you think?

jg moebus

I agree completely with your assessment of the RNC, Bill. Especially the part about Trump being controllable and cooptable. If he wasn’t, he would have never become a President who completed a full term in office.

In any event: Do you have any thoughts as to why the Principled Progressives of America have not formed their own political party so as to give Americans that choice for “Systemic Reform” come election time?

Bill Astore

Damn good question.

My guess: lack of money. Corporate cash isn’t flowing to progressives. Plus some progressives have been coerced, manipulated, or otherwise propagandized to believe they can “push” Biden (or Harris etc.) in progressive ways. Of course, it’s total BS.

Recognize as well that progressives were burned by both Obama and Bernie. Finally, progressive energy is sapped by “woke” cultural issues rather than focusing on class issues and an antiwar agenda that would also prove attractive to some on the Right as well.

That’s my quick take. Of course, the other part is the corporate media that smears progressives as “far left,” Putin puppets, and therefore untrustworthy and unelectable.

jg moebus

That’s a pretty good quick take.

So the problem, basically, is that there are not enough Americans ~ especially those with money to spend on politics ~ who agree enough with the proposals of Progressivism to actively support it and actually work to make it happen.

Can you think of any way to change that?

Bill Astore

Strangely, Jeff, I wrote a reply and it disappeared on my own site!

Here’s what I think I wrote: What we need, as Bernie said, is a political revolution, but then Bernie decided not to lead it.

How do you effect this “progressive” revolution? It’s extremely hard because so many powerful forces are arrayed against it:

1. Both major political parties in America are against progressive reforms.

2. Corporate elites are against them.

3. Corporate media is against them.

4. Coercive forces such as police forces of all stripes are against them.

What is required is a mass movement willing to be disobedient organized along class interests. A movement of left, right, and center. A movement of the 99% against the 1% (and the .1 -.01%).

Rich and powerful “citizens” (and recall that corporations are citizens now) will not simply hand over power. They will have to be persuaded, convinced, and possibly coerced.

Also, the rich and powerful know how to divide, distract, and demobilize the masses, while keeping the many as downtrodden and debilitated as possible. Hence all the “unhoused” people we see, all the immigrants, all the poor people suffering. Those poor unfortunate souls are partly there to scare the rest of us.

Thomas Jefferson famously opined that “The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” (That’s from memory.) Who is willing to bleed, and how much blood must flow, and even then, will it get any better?

It’s easy to be cynical and pessimistic here, but those are paralyzing forces. Instead, we have to be optimistic or at least determined, else the USS America will continue to slip under the waves of mass corruption and bottomless bankruptcy. And by “bankruptcy” I mean spiritual and moral as much as financial.

What say you? Is there any hope for meaningful change in the USA, and how can that be implemented without violence?

******

Rather than putting the onus on Jeff Moebus, what about you, loyal readers? Can meaningful change be effected in America that actually helps the 99%? That moves the country into less militaristic waters? That restores liberty and power to the people? If so, how, and at what price?

One essential step: campaign finance reform. A country where money=speech is by definition a plutocracy. Another essential step: a radical downsizing of empire and a Pentagon budget reduced by 50%. But with a corrupt Congress that loves money and the military, how are these changes to be made?

Declaring Our Independence from War

W.J. Astore

“War is a madhouse”

It’s Independence Day in America, so it seems like a good day to declare our independence from the insanity of war.

Sadly, since the presidency of George W. Bush if not before, it’s become routine for U.S. commanders-in-chief to boast of having the world’s finest military in all of history. Obama did it routinely, and Biden recently said the same during his disastrous debate with Trump. Few Americans stop to think about the implications of boasting about having the world’s greatest military—is such a boast truly consistent with democracy, liberty, and freedom?

Certainly, empires rely on strong militaries. Think of the Roman Empire or the Mongol Empire, or the Third Reich (Empire) of Nazi Germany. Do we want to be like them?

Those empires lived by the sword (quite literally so with the Roman Empire) and died by it as well. Their militaries, I would argue, were also more effective than the U.S. one, which hasn’t won a major war since 1945, the latter with a lot of help from our “friends” like the Soviet Union. The Roman, Mongol, and German empires are no more, worn down in part through the constant costs and demands of war. We need to learn more from history than the “fact” that America’s military is supposedly the world’s best since forever and a day ago.

I’ve been reading Oriana Fallaci’s “Nothing, and So Be It,” in which she recounted her time reporting on the Vietnam War. Two conversations with U.S. troops in Vietnam caught my attention. On pages 22-23, she recounts a conversation with Army Captain Scher, during which Scher confesses his disgust with war: 

God, how disgusting war is. Let me say it—I’m a soldier. People who enjoy making war, who find it glorious and exciting, must have twisted minds. There’s nothing glorious, nothing exciting; it’s just a filthy tragedy you can only cry over. You cry for the man you refused a cigarette to and who didn’t come back with the patrol. You cry for the man you bawled out and who is blown to pieces in front of you. You cry for the man who killed your friends …

Later in the book, she interviews a Marine Lieutenant whose surname is Teanek (pages 174-75). Here’s what he had to say:

Teanek: “Men have been saying that [we should abolish war] for thousands of years, and with the justification that they’re abolishing war, they’ve soaked the greatest periods of their civilization in blood.”

Fallaci: “That’s no good reason to keep on doing it.”

Teanek: “Theoretically, you’re right, but in practice what you’re saying is very silly. It’s like convincing yourself—as I bet you do—that when you describe people dying in war you’re helping to abolish war. On the contrary. The more you see people who’ve been killed in war, the more you want to go on fighting wars: it’s a mystery of the human soul.”

It is indeed “a mystery of the human soul” why we humans persist in killing each other in such vast numbers through war. Of course, it’s partly because we glorify it, when we should recognize, as Fallaci does on page 187, that “War is a madhouse.”

I am sane!

One of my favorite scenes in any war film came in “The Big Red One,” a World War II movie by Samuel Fuller starring Lee Marvin as a grizzled Army sergeant of the 1st Infantry Division. It’s a scene in which U.S. troops liberate an insane asylum.

The unforgettable part of this scene for me is when one of the madhouse residents picks up a submachine gun and starts blasting away, crying “I am one of you. I am sane!”

We need to declare our independence from that.

“Nobody should profit from the slaughter of innocents”

W.J. Astore

Jack Gilroy has his day in court against the Merchants of Death

This afternoon at 2:00PM, 89-year-old Jack Gilroy has his day in court in Endicott Village, New York. His crime: trespassing. His real “crime”: protesting against genocide in Gaza and a murderous war in Ukraine and U.S. support of and profiteering from the same.

Believe me, this video is available, but YouTube prefers to dissuade you from watching it

Jack reached out to me a week ago. He’s a “Bracing Views” reader and asked if I might share his ideas and plight with all of you. Hell yes, I said, so here are some words from Jack Gilroy as he prepares for his day in court later this afternoon:

My reward [for peace activism] at St Francis Xavier Parish (Jesuit) in NYC was just last week when I was given a nice plaque for my peace and justice actions over the decades. It was the first recognition since I received Soldier of the Month in my Infantry Battalion in the Austrian Alps in June of 1955. I had just come back from Vienna and some face-to-face confrontation with Godless Communists. I saw just young people like me, and I was just turning 20 at the time. The good Catholic sisters (IHM) who taught me in Carbondale, Pa a little coal town, were the same ones that taught Joe Biden just a few miles away in Scranton and seven years younger than me. I woke up to the lie of militarism in 1955 but Joe is still trapped in the lies of the Cold War.

Today I will go on trial in a village court in Endicott NY for trespass on the property that I pay for with tax dollars, nearby BAE Systems. I was attempting to deliver a letter to warn management and workers that they are part of a series of criminal law-breaking as outlined in our Veterans For Peace Six Broken Laws Letter. I was arrested when BAE Security called the cops. 

In my attempt to get folks to come to my trial, I note the trial is not about me, but the Merchants of Death, and BAE Systems is one of the largest.

We (VFP, Pax Christi and Peace Action members) started Tax Day 2024, April 15 at the 155mm shell factory of General Dynamics in Scranton (like BAE, General Dynamics makes a lot of dough from nuclear weapons but 155mm shells are the most desired ammo of both Israel and Ukraine). They would not take my letter so we left it for an armed soldier to maybe deliver it. He said he could not take letters. Our little cortege of vehicles drove north to nearby Archbald, PA, where Lockheed Martin makes Paveway I and Paveway II bombs to blow apart children and other living beings anywhere in the world, e.g. Gaza. A security guard took the letter and likely got his ass reamed out when he took it to a superior–the Chief of Police of Archbald was there (I called his office the day before) and he seemed surprised to learn we were opposing the company that has done so much for the depressed anthracite coal valley.

Then, back in our cars and on to Endicott NY where others met us and where I used the envelope in my attempt to deliver the letter. 

We have videos of all that [see above video], and I will defend myself in court (my last time out was very expensive for attorney fees in Syracuse, where I refused to take a plea bargain like the other 31 who did outside the gate of the 174th Attack Wing of the NYS National Guard. My sentence was three months in the Jamesville Penitentiary and the biggest Community Service anyone had ever seen at 1500 hours.

This offense will not be like my other trespass times like the SOA and my trips to four federal prisons shortly after retiring as a high school Participation in Government Teacher. One U.S. Marshall said as he scanned my file, “Schoolteacher, eh. Well, we’re going to give you a lesson.” The lesson was called Diesel Therapy and I won’t get into it. 

So, maybe you can squeeze in a column on this only trial that we know going on that challenges the Merchants of Death. I’ve been in contact with Josh Paul, who resigned his position as Director of the Department of State because he said laws were being broken and he didn’t want to be part of it.

Well, we put members of the Krupp family in prison following the Nuremberg Trials in 1945-47, so let’s start looking at CEOs and others from Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and my nearby BAE Systems, who most people around here think electric buses are their only product. (96 % of BAE contracts are military.)

Jack Gilroy then added a few more details about Congress and the military-industrial complex:

Dems and Repubs are always at the war factories when a new contract is announced. What nice smiles Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand have when the big bucks are announced. Schumer takes more money from the war merchants than any other U.S. politician.

And Senator Gillibrand married into a British family who are major stockholders in BAE Systems. Her in-laws sold their stock when she became a Senator (but funded her campaign with a half million bucks).

Readers, please keep Jack in your thoughts as he faces the judge today. And especially keep his words here in mind: “Nobody should profit from the slaughter of innocents. We must protest loudly and persistently, lest we ourselves become complicit in war crimes and genocide.”

You have to work so hard to be poor in America

W.J. Astore

Before my father became a firefighter, he was for many years a factory worker. He knew hard work, and he once told me that the harder he’d worked in his life, the more physical the labor, the less pay he’d received. He also reminded me near the end of his life that the rich had neither sympathy nor use for the poor.

Perhaps you’ve already seen the above video in which a working-class American, a painter who has his own small business, breaks down as he laments his inability to provide for his wife and daughter in these increasingly bleak economic times. His naked vulnerability, and his call for real change, will break your heart.

Have a heart if you’ve got a heart, my Polish mother-in-law would say, and she too knew the reality of factory work. Speaking of heart, she had a large and generous one. Why is it that those who have the least money while slogging the hardest for it often are the most generous?

Truly, you have to work so hard to be poor in America. Being poor comes at an enormous price in so many ways. Yet Americans are encouraged by our “betters” to focus on “lifestyles of the rich and famous” while disparaging and looking down on the working poor.

This country is seriously fucked, to use a technical term, and nothing is going to change until we listen to those who are calling for us to come together and make fundamental changes to a thoroughly corrupt and corrupting system of government/business that worships nothing but money as a measure of goodness and greatness.

“Order Must Prevail”

W.J. Astore

Biden denounces violence, destruction, and hate, but only in America

President Biden read a short statement today in which he stated “order must prevail” across America. Sometimes squinting at the teleprompter and occasionally slurring his words, Biden said there’s no place for violence, destruction, and hate in America. Apparently, there is a place for violence, destruction, and hate in Gaza, as his administration continues to send more bullets and bombs to Israel in its war of annihilation there, but no matter.

Follow this link for Biden’s statement.

The best part of Biden’s statement came at the end, when he was asked if student protests had changed his mind at all. “No,” Biden replied.

Who says Joe Biden can’t speak simply, clearly, and honestly?

Biden puts a premium on order in his short statement on campus protests

An important point I was reminded of as I read Helen Benedict at TomDispatch today is how campus protests and coverage of the same in the U.S. is being used to obscure ongoing mass death and suffering in Gaza. The mainstream media here loves a good domestic “law and order” issue featuring controversy and (limited) violence, but forget about honest coverage of massive destruction in Gaza and mass murder of Palestinians.

In sum, Biden has always been a law and order man, with an emphasis on order, boasting of using police and prisons for social control. So his stance today was totally predictable—and totally retrograde and unproductive.

Biden, who in 2018 confessed he had no empathy for youth today and their complaints about tough times, is certainly showing that he indeed has no empathy for them.

For the U.S. Establishment, Violence Is the Answer

W.J. Astore

Meandering Thoughts on Campus Protests against Genocide and Police Responses

College and university campuses across the USA are increasingly the sites of violence, but that violence is largely being committed by police units called in to disperse and arrest protesters. The police, I assume, are, as they say, just following orders. The question is: Who’s giving those orders? And the answer most often seems to be senior administrators at those colleges and universities. Welcome to your education in liberal values!

Police do what they’re trained to do, just as soldiers do what they’re trained to do. Soldiers aren’t freedom-bringers and diplomats: they are trained in the use of deadly force under the most violent of conditions. Police aren’t educators and negotiators: they are also trained in the use of suppressive force under violent conditions.

On campuses across America, police have done what police are armed and trained to do here. They break out their riot gear, their sniper rifles, their armored cars, their tools of behavior modification (e.g. cuffs, Tasers, truncheons, rubber bullets, tear gas and pepper spray), and they go to work. They literally kick ass and take names (and mug shots, fingerprints, and so on).

Police are here to protect and to serve, so we’re told. But to protect and to serve whom? And for what cause? Ultimately, police protect the powerful, those with property and money, because those are the ones giving them their orders. If and when police begin to refuse orders from above, that’s when the powerful will truly begin to worry.

It’s interesting that some student protesters, as at Columbia, are now being compared (as by MSNBC) to the January 6th protesters and rioters for Trump. It’s a sign of desperation by the establishment to equate anti-genocide protesters with pro-Trump rioters, but there you have it. Recall on January 6th that the police largely stepped aside and allowed protesters for Trump into the Capitol. I don’t see the police stepping aside on campuses or taking selfies with protesters, or even removing barriers, as some police did on January 6th.

In “Rollerball,” John Housemen explains to James Caan that he is not to interfere with management decisions

The overly violent and repressive responses we’re witnessing across America to largely peaceful protests reveals the imperative at the heart of America’s political system. Recalling the movie “Rollerball,” the one thing you’re never supposed to do as a corporate-citizen is to question management decisions. America’s managers have decided to support Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and YOU ARE NOT TO INTERFERE WITH THAT. If you do, your protest will be suppressed, often quickly and violently.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/Oe1NTpPIyEs?start=262s&rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

There’s a reason America’s managers “invest” so much in the “thin blue line” of the police. They believe in violence as the way to uphold their power and privilege. It doesn’t matter that violence hasn’t always worked, especially in foreign wars (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.). They’ll continue to use violence as long as it remains profitable to do so, whether economically or politically.

How long before people are killed or seriously injured in these police actions? How long before those who are killed or wounded are denounced as “bums,” as President Richard Nixon called the dead students of Kent State? How long before we hear that the “silent majority” supports Trump and/or Biden in their call for “law and order”?

How long before Israel renders Gaza Palestinian-free, as various U.S. police forces mobilize to render college campuses protester-free?

And how long before we’re told once again that America is the greatest, most exceptional, nation on earth because of all our freedoms?

Enabling Genocide Is OK, Hush Money Not OK

W.J. Astore

What a country!

I’m already drowning in mainstream media coverage of Trump’s trial for paying hush money to Stormy Daniels and hiding it under the cover of legal fees. The gavel-to-gavel coverage is mindlessly extreme, designed as it is both to tarnish Trump’s image (as if that’s possible) and to capture eyeballs and ratings.

Stormy weather for Trump (Photo by Victor J. Blue)

Meanwhile, Biden’s enabling of genocide in Gaza proceeds apace, and indeed Congress is acting to accelerate it by sending even more weaponry to Israel. Crimes against humanity—what? Where? I don’t see any.

The message: enabling genocide is OK, killing or displacing millions of Palestinians from Gaza isn’t a crime, but don’t you dare pay a woman you had a consensual fling with to keep quiet and then try to hide it. Some crimes can’t be forgiven!

The other big story this week, besides the trial of the millennium against Trump, is the upcoming NFL Draft. I cannot count the number of “mock” drafts I’ve seen, the amount of ink spilled, predicting what will happen in the draft, which players will be chosen in which order, what trades will be made, and so on. The coverage is both endless and exhaustive. And all of it is unnecessary. If you want to know about the draft and which players “your” team selects, why not just wait until the draft is over?

I just wish the mainstream media devoted one-tenth of the resources it commits to the NFL Draft to more serious issues like Gaza or Ukraine or homeless people in America.

Speaking of Ukraine, did you see Members of Congress waving little Ukrainian flags when the House approved over $60 billion in aid to prolong the Russia-Ukraine War? At least now we know whose side they’re on. I had no idea we elected representatives to serve Ukraine, but I’m learning.

If you’re a Trump aficionado, an NFL fanatic, and a Ukraine flag waver, this is your week, America.

Standard Disclaimer: Nope, I’m not a Trump fan. See this article I wrote in March of 2016 about how Trump is constitutionally unsuited for the presidency.

It’s Such a Strange Time in America

W.J. Astore

I went to a political debate and a hockey game broke out

America is in deep trouble, yet this year’s election is a rerun of 2020, of Biden against Trump, a singularly uninspiring “choice” for the presidency.

With respect to Biden, his handlers are doing their best to isolate him, to control his campaign events, and to limit the questions he has to face. Consider this example:

A Biden campaign aide says the president will take a few questions, and other staffers immediately step in to put an end to the event. No unscripted questions allowed!

Then there’s Trump. His campaign appearances are more unhinged than unscripted as Trump rails against immigrants, stolen elections, and various nasty people he doesn’t like. Trump is a collection of petty grievances.

An aspect of Trump’s personality that intrigues me is his almost complete inability to laugh. Rarely if ever do you see him enjoying a good laugh, and never at his own expense. The most you’ll get from Trump is a Cheshire-cat-like grin. He may be a “very stable genius,” but he’s largely a humorless one. His idea of humor is making fun of or insulting other people, notably women, for being ugly or otherwise unattractive to his alpha male gaze.

Meanwhile, both major parties, Republican and Democrat, seem most concerned to attack and vilify the other as extremist, as fascist, as un-American, or otherwise beyond the pale. I went to a political rally and a hockey game broke out. Seriously, last night’s game between the New Jersey Devils and New York Rangers features a line brawl that started as soon as the puck dropped. That’s basically our political scene today.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/phGAeWcsSw8?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

Airman Sets Himself on Fire to Protest Genocide in Gaza

W.J. Astore

Mainstream Media Outlets Say No One Was Harmed in the Israeli Embassy while Denying the Reality of Genocide 

A young Air Force airman set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in DC to protest genocide in Gaza. Aaron Bushnell, 25, died after being taken to a hospital.

Aaron Bushnell before he set himself on fire. Mainstream media sites chose not to feature any images of Bushnell, focusing instead on the Israeli Embassy or “the crime scene”

This was an extreme and deadly act of political protest directed against the Israeli government’s killing and wounding of 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza and its ongoing war of annihilation there, a war abetted by the U.S. government’s political and military power. Bushnell shouted “Free Palestine!” as he burned.

Bizarrely, an officer at the scene pointed a gun at him as he burned before another first responder asked for fire extinguishers. How a man on fire posed a threat to others is unclear.

[Update 2/26, 1730 EST: CNN provides a decent summary of Bushnell’s intent; follow this link:  https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1762212568398278893]

[Update 2/27, 0820 EST: Disgracefully, this was the headline of a story at the Washington Post on Bushnell: Airman who set self on fire grew up on religious compound, had anarchist past.  At this link. It appears Bushnell grew up in a Christian society in Orleans on Cape Cod, that he joined the Air Force in 2020, served as a cyber defense ops specialist in Texas, and was interested in U.S. history, socialism, and anarchism.  The Washington Post article is at pains to portray him as being raised by a weird, possibly abusive, Christian cult while putting a heavy stress on his interest in anarchism. He also liked cats and Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, so you just know he was a misfit. In all seriousness, Bushnell seems to me to have been an unusually principled and sensitive man who acted out of strong moral conviction.]

Aaron Bushnell, an unusually principled, determined, and thoughtful young man

Coverage in the mainstream media is revealing. I checked three sites: NBC, CBS, and the Guardian in Britain. Let’s look at NBC first.  NBC said that Bushnell’s act was an “apparent protest” against the “Israeli-Hamas war.” NBC later added that Israel’s “crackdown” in Gaza was termed a genocide by Bushnell. NBC itself stuck to the narrative that Israel is engaged in a defensive war, a “crackdown,” against Hamas.

Next, let’s look at CBS.  CBS repeated the narrative of “an apparent protest of Israel’s actions in its war against Hamas.” CBS did mention that Bushnell’s stated motivation was that he could no longer be complicit in an ongoing genocide in Gaza, followed by a lengthy denial by Netanyahu and the Israeli government. Claims of genocide are “false” and “outrageous,” as CBS gave Netanyahu the last word. 

Turning to the British Guardian, its first sentence is more blunt: An active-duty member of the US air force has died after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington DC, while declaring he will “no longer be complicit in genocide”.

It also included a key statement Bushnell apparently included on his Facebook page: “Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”

Nevertheless, the Guardian downplayed the 100,000 killed and wounded in Gaza as numbers generated by the “Hamas-run health service” there.

The final site I’d like to consider is Antiwar.com, an example of alternative media, I suppose. This site gets it right, in my view, so I’m posting the article here in its entirety:

US Airman Sets Himself on Fire in Front of Israeli Embassy to Protest Gaza Genocide

The airman said he would ‘no longer be complicit in genocide’

by Dave DeCamp February 25, 2024 at 9:04 pm ET Categories NewsTags Gaza, Israel

Updated on 2/26/24 at 7:44 am EST

An active duty US airman set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC to protest the US-backed slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.

According to Talia Jane, an independent journalist who obtained the video of the incident, the airman, who was identified as Aaron Bushnell, 25, died of his wounds late Sunday night.

According to Axios, a video of the incident shows the airman saying he would “no longer be complicit in genocide” and that he was about to “engage in an extreme act of protest.”

“But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal,” Bushnell said right before lighting himself on fire.

While on fire, he repeatedly shouted, “Free Palestine.” He burned for about one minute before law enforcement officers extinguished the flames. According to Jane, one officer initially drew his gun on the airman as he burned.

Washington DC’s Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department said in a post on X that the airman was transported to a hospital with “critical life-threatening injuries.” The department also said the officers who extinguished the fire were members of the US Secret Service.

The dramatic protest comes as the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza by the Israeli campaign is approaching 30,000, and over 69,000 have been wounded. About two-thirds of the casualties are women and children.

The International Court of Justice has ruled that it’s “plausible” Israel is committing genocide and decided to take up the case brought to the court by South Africa. Despite the massive civilian casualty rate and international pressure, the US continues to provide unconditional support for the slaughter.

Democracy (Not) in America

W.J. Astore

Some thoughts on the U.S. political system

Early in the 19th century, Alexis De Tocqueville famously wrote “Democracy in America.” Early in the 21st century, that title is more appropriate for a fictional or even fantasy work on America.

How so? A BV reader sent along an article from the American Prospect: “America is not a democracy,” by David Dayen. Based on that article and a few reflections of my own, here’s how and why democracy is dead in the USA:

  1. Big money in politics. Members of Congress chase the money and are obedient to it. So are presidents. So too are even SCOTUS justices. Indeed, SCOTUS basically said corporations are citizens and that money is speech in the infamous Citizens United decision. Those with the most money have the most speech in America. Those with no money are essentially mute and powerless.
  2. Gerrymandering. Both Democrats and Republicans draw district lines to inhibit real electoral competition. Thus most seats in Congress are “safe,” dominated by a single party.
  3. Voter Suppression. There are all sorts of tactics to depress voter turnout among the “unwashed.” Unnecessary voter ID laws. The closing of polling stations. Dropping people from the polling lists. Holding the vote on a work day. Even the presence of police officers and “voting monitors” at the polls.
  4. Corporate Ownership of the Mainstream Media: The MSM touts corporate-friendly candidates from the two major parties. Third-party candidates are almost entirely ignored when not openly vilified and condemned as “spoilers.”
  5. For the presidency, the electoral college. Presidents aren’t elected by popular vote; what matters is winning the electoral college. As a result, this year’s election will likely come down to roughly 500,000 voters in six “swing” states.
  6. For the senate, the persistence of the filibuster. Both parties conveniently use the filibuster as an excuse for why they can’t get things done for workers and the middle class.
  7. The decline of unions. Workers only have power when they organize and stand together as one, flexing their muscles with strikes and other actions. The decline of unions has largely neutered the working classes.
  8. Constant wars overseas. As James Madison noted, constant warfare is the enemy of democracy and the friend of authoritarianism and corruption.
  9. Obstacles to third-party challengers. Republicans and Democrats share a contempt for third-party challengers, erecting obstacles via lawsuits and similar activities. Just ask Ralph Nader or RFK Jr.
  10. Sham primaries. The RNC and DNC are private institutions. The DNC is controlled by so-called superdelegates. Neither party is interested in the will of voters; they serve the whims of the owners and donors.

There are several words you can use to describe America’s system of government. Oligarchy, rule by the few, applies. Plutocracy, rule by the rich, applies. Kleptocracy, rule by the greedy and corrupted, applies. Even kakistocracy, rule by the worst, has some applicability. The word that doesn’t apply is democracy.

Well, it’s an idea …

This is not news to my readers, of course. Consider the Princeton Study from 2014, which reached the following conclusions:

When a majority of citizens [in the USA] disagrees with economic elites and/or with organised interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it.

The study concludes:

Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organisations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.

Sure, we have regular elections, but who’s excited by this year’s likely choice of Biden/Trump for the presidency? And do we really have freedom of speech? Try protesting in DC against genocide in Gaza, especially in the hearing rooms of Congress.

America is an oligarchy ruled by powerful interests such as the military-industrial-congressional complex, Wall Street, Big Pharma, the banks, health insurers, the billionaire class, and indeed any entity with deep pockets that can transmute its gold into political reach and speech. All legal, of course!

We’d like to think America is a land of decent George Baileys and small-town egalitarianism like Bedford Falls, but America’s owners and donors much prefer Pottersville USA, where the rich and powerful call the shots. And so Pottersville it is.

P.S. People ask me, OK, smartypants, how do we change this? As they say, power concedes nothing without a demand. A demand backed up by the power of the masses. Specific steps are easy to state, difficult to achieve. Get big money out of politics. End the filibuster. Eliminate the electoral college. End gerrymandering and voter suppression. Revive unions. End wars. And so on. In a word, fight.