Muslim-Americans have given much to America. Some have given their all.
W.J. Astore
When I was a lieutenant colonel on active duty, I supervised an officer in the U.S. Air Force who was (and is) an Iraqi-American. He came to the U.S. as a boy after President George H.W. Bush’s call to the Shia to revolt against Saddam in the aftermath of Desert Storm, which was ruthlessly suppressed by Saddam as Bush and company did nothing.
As an Iraqi-American in uniform, he served as an interpreter attached to the 101st Airborne in Iraq in 2004, if memory serves–dangerous times indeed for U.S. troops in Iraq.
He wrote to me, rightly outraged, after Ben Carson made his anti-Muslim comments back in September of 2015 during the presidential primary season. It made him so sad, so angry, as a U.S. Air Force veteran and as a Muslim-American to hear such ignorance, such bias, such Islamophobia. And it made me angry as well.
So many Muslim-Americans have served this country with distinction, troops like Navy veteran Nate Terani, who has written an eloquent article at TomDispatch.com on the prejudice he faced as an Iranian-American. Terani is doing his best to fight a new enemy, Islamophobia, the irrational fear of Islam fed by the unhinged rhetoric of candidates like Ben Carson and Donald Trump.
In Iran, theocratic fundmentalists sowed division and hatred of outsiders–of Westerners, Christians, and other religious minorities. Here in America, the right wing seems to have stolen passages directly from their playbook as it spreads hatred of immigrants, particularly Muslim ones. This form of nationalistic bigotry–Islamophobia–threatens the heart of our nation. When I chose to serve in the military, I did so to protect what I viewed as our sacred foundational values of liberty, equality, and democracy. Now, 20 years later, I’ve joined forces with fellow veterans to again fight for those sacred values, this time right here at home.
As America builds walls and weapons and wages war all over the globe, as our leaders look outward for enemies, we’re forgetting the enemy within America, the enemy that is a much more serious threat to our national security. That enemy, which exists right here in America’s heartland, is ignorance, hatred, fear, aggression, compounded by a cowardly desire to “get even” and to “make America great again” by ostracizing other Americans who are considered “different” and “untrustworthy.”
But spreading fear and bigotry is not a way to national security; it’s a way to national insanity. Islamophobia, like all other irrational fears, must be fought and defeated.
Almost the exact expression Trump wore through most of the debate
W.J. Astore
In the last formal debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, here are a few things I heard:
1. Hillary thinks Trump is unqualified to be president. Trump thinks Hillary should be locked up as a criminal.
2. Trump thinks Hillary is a nasty woman. Hillary thinks Trump is a Russian puppet.
3. Hillary thinks Trump may start a nuclear war. Trump thinks Hillary is a loser who will make America vulnerable to foreign powers.
4. Trump thinks the election is rigged and that the media is firmly in Hillary’s corner. Hillary thinks Trump is encouraging Russia to hack and manipulate the election.
5. Trump thinks Hillary supports the ripping of babies from the wombs of mothers (late-term abortions). Hillary thinks Trump is a serial assaulter of women.
6. Trump says all nine women who accused him of unwanted sexual advances/assaults are either opportunists seeking a few minutes of fame, or stooges in the employ of the Clinton campaign. Clinton says Trump is a tax dodger, an exploiter of immigrant labor, and an enthusiast for cheap Chinese steel at the expense of American workers.
7. Trump says Clinton is all talk and no action. Clinton says Trump is a man who never apologizes and who never takes responsibility for his actions.
Yes, it was that bad. Usually the question is “Who won the debate,” and the answer is clear: we the American people lost. Put on the spot, I’d say that Hillary won because of Trump’s refusal to say whether he’d accept the result of the election. That refusal to accept the will of the voters is fundamentally undemocratic. To me, it made Trump look like a sore loser even before he’s lost.
I can’t imagine Trump or Hillary supporters had their minds changed while watching this debate. But I can guess that Hillary picked up more undecided or fence-straddling voters. Why? Because Trump’s message (as well as his demeanor) was so relentlessly negative. My wife could hardly stand being in the same room with Trump on the TV: he was, in a literal sense, giving her the creeps. Something tells me many other women across America were similarly repulsed by Trump. He was more than combative toward Hillary: he was sneering, condescending, and insulting.
Image is important in debates, and Hillary came across as the fresher of the two, the more likable, the more positive, the more focused. As I watched Trump rant, I told my wife that he reminded me of the Grinch who stole Christmas, with his snarl and his hate and his withered heart.
Will the Grinch steal the election? From the Grinch’s perspective, the election has already been stolen from him. That’s my takeaway from the debate: that Trump is a sore loser even before he’s lost.
My post-debate prediction: Welcome to four more years of the Clintons, America. See you in 2020.
I’d vote for Imperator Furiosa before Hillary and Trump
W.J. Astore
This year’s presidential election is depressing. I suppose Trump and Hillary supporters are fired up. They want to see “their” candidate win. But for me, I wish a pox on both their houses, even as I hope the eventual winner is not as bad as he or she appears to be.
With respect to foreign policy, neither candidate comes close to representing my views. Instead of American exceptionalism, instead of global reach and global power, I believe the U.S. needs to learn the merits of minding its own business. I want a country that is not imperial, not militaristic, and not intent on waging forever wars against inchoate forces (terror) and with a changing roster of enemies (Al Qaeda/ISIS/radical Islam, North Korea, Iran, and now possibly Russia and China, and who knows who or what else next). I want active wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to end. I want U.S. troops to be brought home.
We don’t need a new Cold War, America. Nor should we be elevating terrorism, a containable threat, to an existential threat. The true existential threat is incessant greed-wars, which will bankrupt our country even as they administer the death blow to our democracy.
The main candidates, Trump and Clinton, are committed to feeding the national security state. Both promise more wars, especially war-hawk Clinton. With Trump, honestly, I have no idea what to expect from him. Trump has all the makings of a Nero. He’ll fiddle (or Tweet) while the world burns. And Hillary? She’s a self-styled Imperator Furiosa (from the latest Mad Max movie) but without her heart.
So much of U.S. foreign policy nowadays is about selling weaponry. We sell billions and billions to the Israelis and Saudis (among others), and the peoples of Palestine and Yemen suffer and die as a result. Are U.S. hands clean merely because we made the weapons (and in some cases subsidized their purchase)? What kind of “democracy” dominates the world’s arms trade? In more enlightened days, the U.S. excoriated European countries and their “merchants of death” (this was in the 1920s and 1930s). Now we are the merchants of death, boasting of all the money we’re making. We have met the enemy, and he is us.
Trump and Hillary: one a Nero, one an Imperator. Both American exceptionalists, both believers in the military, both willing to wield big sticks while never speaking softly. Yes, I find that depressing.
On domestic policy, Hillary hews closer to what I believe, at least in theory. But in practice who knows with Hillary? She speaks with forked tongue on so many important issues. I think liberals/progressives can count on her to be pro-choice, to be pro-LGBTQ, to be (or appear to be) sensitive to racism, to be inclusive (compared to Republicans), to be pro-immigration (again, compared to Republicans). For many liberals/progressives/democrats, Hillary’s predictability on these issues is enough, especially compared to the hard right positions embraced by Trump/Pence. And indeed more than a few of my Democratic friends are voting for Hillary based on these positions, together with their faith (fingers crossed) that her Supreme Court nominees will be somewhere to the left of Antonin Scalia.
Is that enough? Not for me. Again, it’s Hillary’s opportunism, the way she slips in and out of positions as if they’re so many interchangeable pantsuits, that I find so depressing. Whether it’s the TPP or fracking or the $15 minimum wage or health care reform or bank reform or what have you, she changes her tune, much like a piper responding to requests. Yes, he who pays the piper calls the tune, and I can’t pay the piper what Goldman Sachs can. So I’ll never hear my tune played; only theirs. And I know how that song ends: with even greater inequality followed by another financial meltdown, and this time maybe the middle class will die.
I can’t vote for more of the same (Hillary) only with more fury. I can’t vote for random acts of caprice and belligerence guided by ignorance (Trump). Honestly, you know what I want to do? Write in “Bernie Sanders.” He’s not perfect (who is?), but he has character and integrity, and that’s what this country really needs. I know: Bernie told me to vote for Hillary. But dammit, Bernie, I can’t do it.
Did I say I was depressed? After I write in Bernie’s name on November 8th, I’ll walk away from the voting booth with a smile. And to me that’s not a “wasted” vote.
Editor’s Note: I’ve been reading Chris Hedges since his fine book, “War Is A Force that Gives Us Meaning.” In this article, Hedges explains the cynicism of the U.S. political process, pinning the tail on the Democratic donkey even as the Republican elephant remains looming in the room. The Democrats, by moving to the right and by encouraging the rise of “fringe” candidates like Trump, have created a system that has alienated large swathes of the American electorate. Many of these people have embraced Trump, a political outsider with major, probably fatal, flaws. It’s what happens in the aftermath of Trump’s probable defeat that worries Hedges — as should it worry all of us.
Americans are not offered major-party candidates who have opposing political ideologies or ideas. We are presented only with manufactured political personalities. We vote for the candidate who makes us “feel” good about him or her. Campaigns are entertainment and commercial vehicles to raise billions in advertising revenue for corporations. The candidate who can provide the best show gets the most coverage. The personal brand is paramount. It takes precedence over ideas, truth, integrity and the common good. This cult of the self, which defines our politics and our culture, contains the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, grandiosity, self-importance, a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation, and incapacity for remorse or guilt. Donald Trump has these characteristics. So does Hillary Clinton.
Our system of inverted totalitarianism has within it the seeds of an overt or classical fascism. The more that political discourse becomes exclusively bombastic and a form of spectacle, the more that emotional euphoria is substituted for political thought and the more that violence is the primary form of social control, the more we move toward a Christianized fascism.
Last week’s presidential debate in St. Louis was only a few degrees removed from the Jerry Springer TV show—the angry row of women sexually abused or assaulted by Bill Clinton, the fuming Trump pacing the stage with a threatening posture, the sheeplike and carefully selected audience that provided the thin veneer of a democratic debate while four multimillionaires—Martha Raddatz, Anderson Cooper, Clinton and Trump—squabbled like spoiled schoolchildren.
The Clinton campaign, aware that the policy differences between her and a candidate such as Jeb Bush were minuscule, plotted during the primaries to elevate the fringe Republican candidates—especially Trump. To the Democratic strategists, a match between Clinton and Trump seemed made in heaven. Trump, with his “brain trust” of Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie, would make Clinton look like a savior.
A memo addressed to the Democratic National Committee under the heading “Our Goals & Strategy” was part of the trove of John Podesta emails released this month by WikiLeaks.
“Our hope is that the goal of a potential HRC [Hillary Rodham Clinton] campaign and the DNC would be one-in-the-same: to make whomever the Republicans nominate unpalatable to the majority of the electorate. We have outlined three strategies to obtain our goal …,” it reads.
The memo names Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and Ben Carson as candidates, or what the memo calls “Pied Piper” candidates who could push mainstream candidates closer to the positions embraced by the lunatic right. “We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to [take] them seriously.”
The elites of the two ruling parties, who have united behind Clinton, are playing a very dangerous game. The intellectual and political vacuum caused by the United States’ species of anti-politics, or what the writer Benjamin DeMott called “junk politics,” leaves candidates, all of whom serve the interests of the corporate state, seeking to exaggerate what Sigmund Freud termed “the narcissism of small differences.”
However, this battle between small differences, largely defined by the culture wars, no longer works with large segments of the population. The insurgencies of Trump and Bernie Sanders are evidence of a breakdown of these forms of social control. There is a vague realization among Americans that we have undergone a corporate coup. People are angry about being lied to and fleeced by the elites. They are tired of being impotent. Trump, to many of his most fervent supporters, is a huge middle finger to a corporate establishment that has ruined their lives and the lives of their children. And if Trump, or some other bombastic idiot, is the only vehicle they have to defy the system, they will use him.
The elites, including many in the corporate press, must increasingly give political legitimacy to goons and imbeciles in a desperate battle to salvage their own legitimacy. But the more these elites pillage and loot, and the more they cast citizens aside as human refuse, the more the goons and imbeciles become actual alternatives. The corporate capitalists would prefer the civilized mask of a Hillary Clinton. But they also know that police states and fascist states will not impede their profits; indeed in such a state the capitalists will be more robust in breaking the attempts of the working class to organize for decent wages and working conditions. Citibank, Raytheon and Goldman Sachs will adapt. Capitalism functions very well without democracy.
In the 1990s I watched an impotent, nominally democratic liberal elite in the former Yugoslavia fail to understand and act against the population’s profound economic distress. The fringe demagogues whom the political and educated elites dismissed as buffoons—Radovan Karadzic, Slobodan Milosevic and Franjo Tudman—rode an anti-liberal tide to power.
The political elites in Yugoslavia at first thought the nationalist cranks and lunatics, who amassed enough support to be given secondary positions of power, could be contained. This mistake was as misguided as Franz von Papen’s assurances that when the uncouth Austrian Adolf Hitler was appointed the German chancellor in January 1933 the Nazi leader would be easily manipulated. Any system of prolonged political paralysis and failed liberalism vomits up monsters. And the longer we remain in a state of political paralysis—especially as we stumble toward another financial collapse—the more certain it becomes that these monsters will take power.
Fascism, at its core, is an amorphous and incoherent ideology that perpetuates itself by celebrating a grotesque hypermasculinity, elements of which are captured in Trump’s misogyny. It allows disenfranchised people to feel a sense of power and to have their rage sanctified. It takes a politically marginalized and depoliticized population and mobilizes it around a utopian vision of moral renewal and vengeance and an anointed political savior. It is always militaristic, anti-intellectual and contemptuous of democracy and replaces culture with nationalist and patriotic kitsch. It sees those outside the closed circle of the nation-state or the ethnic or religious group as diseased enemies that must be physically purged to restore the health of nation.
Many of these ideological elements are already part of our system of inverted totalitarianism. But inverted totalitarianism, as Sheldon Wolin wrote, disclaims its identity to pay homage to a democracy that in reality has ceased to function. It is characterized by the anonymity of the corporate centers of power. It seeks to keep the population passive and demobilized. I asked Wolin shortly before he died in 2015 that if the two major forms of social control he cited—access to easy and cheap credit and inexpensive, mass-produced consumer products—were no longer available would we see the rise of a more classical form of fascism. He said this would indeed become a possibility.
Bill Clinton transformed the Democratic Party into the Republican Party. He pushed the Republican Party so far to the right it became insane. Hillary Clinton is Mitt Romney in drag. She and the Democratic Party embrace policies—endless war, the security and surveillance state, neoliberalism, austerity, deregulation, new trade agreements and deindustrialization—that are embraced by the Republican elites. Clinton in office will continue the neoliberal assault on the poor and the working poor, and increasingly the middle class, that has defined the corporate state since the Reagan administration. She will do so while speaking in the cloying and hypocritical rhetoric of compassion that masks the cruelty of corporate capitalism.
The Democratic and Republican parties may be able to disappear Trump, but they won’t disappear the phenomena that gave rise to Trump. And unless the downward spiral is reversed—unless the half of the country now living in poverty is lifted out of poverty—the cynical game the elites are playing will backfire. Out of the morass will appear a genuine “Christian” fascist endowed with political skill, intelligence, self-discipline, ruthlessness and charisma. The monster the elites will again unwittingly elevate, as a foil to keep themselves in power, will consume them. There would be some justice in this if we did not all have to pay.
Scheming, secretive, Machiavellian: birds of a feather
W.J. Astore
As Donald Trump continues to implode, it’s worthwhile considering how he even has a chance at the presidency. It’s quite simple, actually: Americans don’t trust the Clintons, and rightly so. Why? Because the Clintons, in their quest for office, try to be all things to all people. Even as they talk about the poorest Americans and economic fairness, for example, they’re promising to make special deals for the richest and special trade deals (open trade borders for all!). Even as they criticize Wall Street they praise bankers and the financial elite behind closed doors (cashing-in big-time for these speeches). Even as they talk about the environment and global warning, they praise fracking and the fossil fuel industry.
What do the Clintons really believe? Like many politicians, they ultimately believe in themselves, in their own quest for power, a quest in which virtually all tactics are justified. In which you can don any mask depending on that day’s audience and performance.
But if you’re all things to all people, you’re basically nothing to no one. Put differently, if you’ve worn so many different masks for so many audiences, which face is the real you?
Trump’s followers embrace him in part because they think they know where he stands. He’s willing to say unpopular things. As loutish and crass and ignorant as Trump is, he’s not always holding a finger up to test the political winds. He’s not always currying favor with (and favors from) established elites. He may be bad, but he’s genuinely bad.
The Clintons? The word “genuine” just doesn’t apply. Words like “scheming” and “secretive” and “Machiavellian,” however, do.
Small wonder that Hillary Clinton is such great friends with Henry Kissinger!
Khan in “Star Trek.” A strong leader if you don’t mind tyranny
W.J. Astore
My wife, who knows how to cut to the chase, pointed out a big aspect of Trump’s appeal to me this morning: “Trump is the anti-Obama.”
Think about it. When it comes to their personal qualities, it would be hard to envision two men who are such polar opposites. Consider Obama. He’s cool. Rational. Analytical. A thinker. He’s also polite, cautious, and considerate. He’s a skilled writer and a poised, often inspirational, speaker. He’s at pains to broadcast a message of inclusiveness. He’s all about diversity and tolerance and embracing those who are different. He’s also by all accounts a loyal family man, a loving husband and father, with a strong marriage.
Consider Trump. Everything I just said about Obama is the opposite for Trump. Trump is emotional. Flamboyant. Given to knee-jerk responses. A man of action. He appears to be impolite, impetuous, and inconsiderate. Near as I can tell, Trump’s books are ghost-written, and his speaking style is bombastic and inflammatory rather than poised and inspirational. Promoting divisiveness rather than inclusiveness, his message of “making America great again” is read by some of his supporters as making America white-male-dominated again. Hardly a loyal family man, he’s on his third marriage, the previous two ending acrimoniously, and if you credit his boasts caught on tape he was trying to cheat on his current wife while they were still newlyweds.
Now, which one of these men is more desirable as a role model? The loyal husband and family man, the one who embraces diversity and brings people together? Or the disloyal husband, the one who boasts of sexual encounters, who objectifies women, the one who rejects tolerance for rhetoric that drives intolerance?
It’s sobering to see self-styled conservative or evangelical Christians, who claim they are all about family values and the sanctity of marriage, twisting their professed beliefs to embrace Trump and reject Obama. Certainly, in some cases racism is involved here, a sense that Obama is “not one of us,” whereas Trump, with all his glaring flaws of character and behavior, is accepted as the imperfect guy who’s “just like me” (or perhaps just like a black sheep of the family).
Here’s another way of looking at it if you’re a “Star Trek” fan: Trump is Captain Kirk to Obama’s Mr. Spock. In his coolly logical manner, Obama has often been compared to Mr. Spock. And Trump as Captain Kirk: it seems to work, since Kirk was a man of action, often emotional, a womanizer, sometimes intemperate.
But this is to insult Captain Kirk. More than anything, Kirk was a leader: a man who brought a diverse crew together and made them better. Yes, he could be intemperate, but he had a capacity for personal growth. Smart, tough, and experienced, Kirk was a ladies’ man, but he wasn’t married and never forced himself on women (with the notable exception of “The Enemy Within” episode, in which Kirk is split in two, his hyper-aggressive twin given to attacking women for his own pleasure).
In “The Enemy Within,” a hyper-aggressive Kirk “twin” sees nothing wrong with sexual assault
In Trump you’re not getting Captain Kirk, America. You’re getting a one-dimensional “evil” Kirk, or perhaps a Khan Noonien Singh, another “Star Trek” character (played memorably by Ricardo Montalbán), a tyrant and ruthless dictator, a man who believes it’s the right of the strong to take or do whatever they want. (So-called Alpha Male behavior, according to one of Trump’s sons, though I prefer a different A-term: Asshole Male.)
Some of Trump’s success, at least initially, came from the fact he was a powerful contrast to Obama, the anti-Obama, if you will. And the “anti-” was more than symbolic, considering how Trump drove the birther movement and its false narrative of how Obama was illegitimate as president. And I can understand after eight years the desire among many for a “Captain Kirk” after two terms of “Mr. Spock.”
But Trump is much more Khan than Kirk. He’d embrace Khan’s motto that “Such [superior] men [like me] dare take what they want.” But a man who believes in his own inherent superiority — that his might will make right — is not a leader. He’s a tyrant. And tyranny is the very opposite of democracy.
Editor’s Note: Jeremy Scahill, author of “Dirty Wars,” minces no words in his reaction to Trump/Clinton and their second “debate.” Scahill’s article appeared originally at The Intercept.
Trump may go away, but the people he has empowered will not
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump during the town hall debate at Washington University on Oct. 9, 2016, in St. Louis, Missouri.
Photo: Rick Wilking/Getty Images
These presidential debates — certainly this one — serve as the most stark commentary on how bankrupt the U.S. electoral system is.
This is the choice the system produces for “viable” candidates.
The cartoonish villainy of Donald Trump is a major factor in distracting attention from the hawkish, neoliberal policies of Hillary Clinton. Hillary’s best selling point for a lot of people — Democrats and, increasingly, Republicans — is: I’m not batshit crazy like Trump.
There is rarely a focus on Clinton’s embrace of regime change, her role in creating the conditions, as secretary of state, for the horror show currently unfolding in Yemen, or her paramilitarization of the State Department. Clinton has never been asked about her role in the secret drone “kill chain” the Obama administration has now codified as a parallel justice system, where there are no trials, indictments, or convictions, but a whole lot of death sentences. Just as Clinton avoided real questions about Libya thanks to the clownfuck Republicans’ carnival over Benghazi, she emerges as the only choice for many sane people. That she is buddy-buddy with Wall Street, speaks one way to them and another way in public, becomes a footnote. She is the empire candidate and that is why the John Negropontes and Max Boots and George H.W. Bushes of the world have embraced her.
Here is the thing, though: Both Clinton’s and Trump’s candidacies have fucked us — albeit in different ways. Hillary represents more of the same bipartisan warmongering. And, under Obama, that has been met with a lot of silence and complicity from liberals. Depressing.
Whether Trump wins, loses, or loses big, he has empowered fascists, racists, and bigots. He did not create them, but he has legitimized them by becoming the nominee and openly expressing their heinous, hateful beliefs. This, to me, is one of the most frightening developments on a domestic level in the U.S. this election cycle. Trump may go away, but the people he has empowered will not.
Much of the post-debate analysis I’ve read from last night’s presidential debate has focused on Donald Trump’s crudeness, his threat to prosecute and jail his political opponent, the way in which he stalked her on the stage, looming in the background and crowding her, and finally his non-apology apology about “locker room banter.” Yes: Trump is most definitely lewd, crude, and socially unacceptable, but that’s hardly the worst of his qualities.
His worst quality? His sweeping ignorance to the point of recklessness when it comes to matters of national defense, and specifically America’s nuclear arsenal.
This is what Trump had to say last night about the U.S. nuclear deterrent:
But our nuclear program has fallen way behind, and they’ve gone wild with their nuclear program. Not good. Our government shouldn’t have allowed that to happen. Russia is new in terms of nuclear. We are old. We’re tired. We’re exhausted in terms of nuclear. A very bad thing.
This is utter nonsense. First off, nuclear weapons are not people. They don’t get “tired” or “exhausted” or “old.” Second, the U.S. nuclear program has not “fallen way behind” the programs of other nations, certainly not Russia’s. Third, even if portions of Russia’s nuclear program are “new” (whatever that means), that’s not necessarily a bad thing for the United States. “New” in this case may mean safer and more reliable systems that are less prone to catastrophic error.
Here’s an undeniable fact: The U.S. nuclear arsenal is by far the world’s most powerful and advanced. The key aspect to nuclear capability is survivability, and nothing is more survivable than America’s force of Trident nuclear submarines. Virtually impossible to detect, America’s Trident force is essentially capable of destroying the world. One submarine carries enough missiles and warheads to devastate every major city in Russia (or any other country, for that matter). What more is needed as a deterrent?
Specifically, an Ohio-class Trident submarine can carry up to 24 nuclear missiles, each with up to eight nuclear warheads, each warhead equivalent to roughly six Hiroshima bombs. That represents a potential for hitting 192 targets, each with six times the impact of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 (which killed up to 200,000 people). That’s 1152 Hiroshimas from one submarine — a rough calculus, I know, but accurate enough to show the awesome might represented by a small portion of America’s nuclear force.
The Trident missiles are also incredibly accurate, with a circular error probability of less than 150 meters. And the U.S. has 14 of these submarines. (Not all are on patrol at any one time.) These highly sophisticated and ultra-powerful submarines are further augmented by land-based ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) and bomber planes (the “air-breathing” element), forming the other two legs of the American nuclear triad. Again, when it comes to redundancy, accuracy, and survivability, no other country comes close to America’s nuclear capability.
This awesome nuclear force is not a sign the U.S. is “old” and “tired” and “exhausted.” It’s a sign that the U.S. is incredibly powerful, and, if you’re a foreign leader, incredibly dangerous, especially if America’s next commander-in-chief is undisciplined, thin-skinned, and in possession of a scattershot knowledge of military matters.
Back in March of this year, Trump boasted at a debate that the U.S. military would follow his orders irrespective of their legality. In this latest debate, he yet again revealed that he has no real knowledge of America’s nuclear capability and how modern and powerful (and scary) it truly is.
Sure, Trump is crude, lewd, and sexist, but those qualities won’t destroy the world as we know it. Ignorance about nuclear weapons, combined with impetuosity and an avowed affection for he-man wild-card generals like George S. Patton and Douglas MacArthur, is a recipe for utter disaster.
Trump, a self-avowed winner, is the sorest of losers
W.J. Astore
Are there too many articles about Donald Trump? You might say yes, until, that is, you realize the man has a fair shot at being America’s next president. With that disaster in the making, one must speak up, which is what Tom Engelhardt has done at TomDispatch.com. Engelhardt shows us what Trump is all about – and what that reveals about the present American moment.
He’s made veiled assassination threats; lauded the desire to punch someone in the face; talked about shooting “somebody” in “the middle of Fifth Avenue”; defended the size of his hands and his you-know-what; retweeted neo-Nazis and a quote from Mussolini; denounced the outsourcing of American manufacturing jobs and products while outsourcing his own jobs and products; excoriated immigrants and foreign labor while hiring the same; advertised the Trump brand in every way imaginable; had a bromance with Vladimir Putin; threatened to let nuclear weapons proliferate; complained bitterly about a rigged election, rigged debates, a rigged moderator, and a rigged microphone; swore that he and he alone was capable of again making America, and so the world, a place of the sort of greatness only he himself could match, and that’s just to begin a list on the subject of The Donald.
Engelhardt highlights an aspect of Trump that more Americans need to see: Trump the Sore Loser. Consider his first debate with Hillary Clinton. Instead of taking personal responsibility (“I had a bad night, but I’ll win the next one”), Trump blamed everyone else and anything else. The election’s rigged. The media’s against me. My mic was bad. And so on. Everyone’s accountable except himself.
In his sore losership, Trump is much like America. One example: It took (some of) us nearly fifty years to get over defeat in the Vietnam War. In fact, many U.S. “experts” still aren’t over it, arguing that America really won that war (like Trump argued he’d won the debate with Hillary at subsequent rallies), or alternatively that the war was “rigged,” i.e. that American troops were winning until they were stabbed in the back, betrayed by a hostile and biased media and pusillanimous and disloyal civilian leaders. Really?
Here’s another telling excerpt from Engelhardt on Trump:
In relation to his Republican rivals, and now Hillary Clinton, he stands alone in accepting and highlighting what increasing numbers of Americans, especially white Americans, have evidently come to feel: that this country is in decline, its greatness a thing of the past, or as pollsters like to put it, that America is no longer “heading in the right direction” but is now “on the wrong track.” In this way, he has mainlined into a deep, economically induced mindset, especially among white working class men facing a situation in which so many good jobs have headed elsewhere, that the world has turned sour.
Or think of it another way (and it may be the newest way of all): a significant part of the white working class, at least, feels as if, whether economically or psychologically, its back is up against the wall and there’s nowhere left to go. Under such circumstances, many of these voters have evidently decided that they’re ready to send a literal loose cannon into the White House; they’re willing, that is, to take a chance on the roof collapsing, even if it collapses on them.
That is the new and unrecognizable role that Donald Trump has filled. It’s hard to conjure up another example of it in our recent past. The Donald represents, as a friend of mine likes to say, the suicide bomber in us all. And voting for him, among other things, will be an act of nihilism, a mood that fits well with imperial decline.
Trump, in other words, embodies the resentment of Americans who are used to seeing themselves (and their country) as winners, but who now recognize, at least on some level, they are no longer winners – that they may be, horror of horrors, losers. And, much like Trump, they are sore about this – but not sore (or honest) enough to look in the mirror. No – far better to cast about for scapegoats, to shift the blame, to avoid taking any personal responsibility.
Trump is the Sore Loser of sore losers. His (possibly winning?) appeal is to tell certain Americans exactly what they want to hear: That it’s not your fault that you’re losing. No – it’s the fault of others. Mexicans. Muslims. China. Pushy women. The liberal media. You name it.
Trump, as Engelhardt notes, is a declinist candidate, a rare thing indeed. But he’s declinist with a twist. He’s not trying to motivate Americans to be better. There’s no idealism to his pitch. No appeal to the better angels of our nature. No – Trump is all about finding (marginal and vulnerable) people to blame and punishing them.
Again, he’s the sorest of losers. Come this November, Americans need to make sure he remains a loser.
Should the United States reject the “first use” of nuclear weapons? That question was put to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump during their first debate. Colonel (retired) Andrew Bacevich asks us to take their answers seriously in his latest insightful essay at TomDispatch.com, which I urge you to read here in full.
Trump was asked to respond first, and his rambling answer, I thought, showed the evidence of someone who had crammed for a test. He was desperate to show he knew something – anything – about America’s nuclear forces (here some may recall how Trump obviously knew little about America’s nuclear triad during the Republican primary debates). So Trump rambled on about obsolete B-52s flown by the sons and grandsons of previous pilots, a non sequitur since the B-52 has been continuously upgraded with new engines, advanced avionics, the latest in high-tech weaponry, and despite their age they’re still more than capable of doing the job. But somebody must have told Trump to use the B-52’s age as a talking point, and he was determined to get it in.
As confused and incoherent as Trump’s reply was (read more about this at TomDispatch.com), at least he tried to grapple with the issue. Trump did reject First Strike. He did refer to the terror of nuclear war, even as he got lost in other talking points about North Korea, Iran, and allegations about how weak on national security Obama is.
By comparison, Clinton’s response was classic Hillary. Avoid and evade. Try to be all things to all voters. Bloviate, in other words, as Warren G. Harding did in 1920. In essence, Hillary ducked the question. She refused to address the issue of first use of nuclear weapons; indeed, she didn’t address nuclear strategy and policy at all. Instead, she drew a contrast between her experience and predictability versus Trump’s inexperience and unpredictability. Her message was clear: I’m not talking about nuclear weapons or policy, except to say you shouldn’t trust Trump with the nuclear launch codes.
Who won on this question? Bacevich is right to say neither candidate won, but it’s clear who lost: the American people. And the world.
It’s shameful that this country hasn’t rejected the first use of nuclear weapons. It’s also shameful that instead of working to eliminate nuclear weapons, the U.S. is actually planning to spend nearly a trillion dollars over the next 30 years to upgrade that arsenal. For what possible strategic purpose, one must ask? America’s current nuclear deterrent is the most powerful and survivable in the world. No other country comes close. There’s no rational reason to invest more money in nuclear weapons, unless you count the jobs and money related to building new nuclear submarines, weaponry, bombs, and all the other infrastructure related to America’s nuclear triad of Trident submarines, land-based bombers, and fixed missile silos.
Neither Trump nor Hillary addressed this issue. Trump was simply ignorant. Hillary was simply disingenuous. Which candidate was worse? When you’re talking about nuclear genocidal death, it surely does matter. Ignorance is not bliss, nor is a lack of forthrightness and honesty.
Next time, Mr. Trump and Secretary Clinton, let’s have some rigor, some honesty, and some wisdom on the issue of nuclear weapons. Not only America deserves it – the world does.
Bracing Views 