Here are some excerpts from recent articles dealing with Trump’s growing disconnection from reality and the expansion of war in the Middle East for and by Israel:
The president responds to the rising economic and political costs of his criminal war with more unhinged threats:
If Iran does anything that stops the flow of Oil within the Strait of Hormuz, they will be hit by the United States of America TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have been hit thus far.
Additionally, we will take out easily destroyable targets that will make it virtually impossible for Iran to ever be built back, as a Nation, again — Death, Fire, and Fury will reign upon them — But I hope, and pray, that it does not happen!
The president started this disaster by making reckless threats, and he keeps digging himself and the rest of us into a deeper hole by making more of them. Many analysts like to predict that Trump will eventually back down and “chicken out,” but this misses that he frequently responds to adversity with more escalation. He caused the crisis with Iran, and when the Iranians refused to give in to his absurd demands he started a major war. Coercion and threats are his only tools, and when those inevitably fail him he tries to use them more aggressively than before.
*****
What is it with these “Death, Fire, and Fury” threats? What kind of a person boasts of raining death down on a people? A totally immoral one, a sociopathic one, a bully with no empathy. A murderous one.
America, this is murderous madness.
*****
At Zeteo, there’s a telling article that “King” Trump’s brain is dead, using his own words as proof. The article also covers Israel’s expansion of the war into Lebanon. More madness, but I suppose Israeli madness has a method to it and a goal: more land for a “greater Israel.” Here’s that article:
Donald Trump delivered remarks in Doral, Florida, last night, to House Republicans during their retreat, and then as part of a press conference. It might not seem like an appropriate time to be off the job, but, dear reader, based on Trump’s remarks, maybe it’s better if he steps away from the steering wheel. Let’s discuss, debunk, annotate, and report on his insanity – quote by quote:
Voters strongly disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy – to a record degree, according to a new Quinnipiac poll. Prices are only getting higher as a result of Trump’s illegal war in Iran.
Once again, there was no proof that Iran posed any “imminent threat” to the US, and, in fact, the country was negotiating a new nuclear deal with the Trump administration before the president decided to attack.
Trump has continued to suggest that Iran was responsible for the horrific bombing of an Iranian girls’ school, killing some 175 people, mostly children. Repeated independent reporting has found that the US was likely the culprit. Footage shows that it was a Tomahawk missile that rained down on the school – a US munition that Iran does not possess.
Now onto the really absurd, brain-addled, and racist moments:
This is one of Trump’s latest ongoing hits: using “Palestinian” as a slur – no less to suggest Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (who himself has said one of his jobs is to keep the left pro-Israel!) is actually too sympathetic to the people Trump and Joe Biden (and Schumer) have co-signed the genocide of. It’s the kind of behavior that, if any other ethnic group were used in such a way, would lead to congressional hearings and breathless media coverage.
And – “the Iranian people who are quite nasty”? The same people Trump and the pro-war establishment are supposedly “freeing”? Instead of liberatory language, even euphemistically, the so-called peace president is speaking in the same vicious register his friends in the Israeli government have spoken in to describe Palestinians – and we see what that’s resulted in.
Trump’s nonsensical riffs like this feel worse when you remember that one of the ships the US sank was an Iranian naval ship not in combat position, and was in the middle of traveling back from an exercise at the invitation of India. The US torpedoed it anyway, with no regard for survivors, leaving Sri Lanka to carry out a rescue mission. If that shocking breach of the Geneva Conventions only targeted one of the ships Trump was referring to, what are the others?
That was literally Trump’s response to a reporter who asked how he could say the war is “very complete” while his defense secretary says “this is just the beginning.” Well, apparently, it’s both! It’s complete, and it’s beginning. Genius!
Nearly 200 children killed: An Iranian official said US-Israeli strikes have killed at least 193 children, including an 8-month-old girl.
A third of 2026 offline: Internet access advocacy group Netblocks said today that at 240 hours, Iran’s near-total internet blackout is “now among the most severe government-imposed nationwide internet shutdowns on record globally, and the second longest registered in Iran after the January protests.” That means Iranians have spent a third of this year offline.
Hospitals hit: US-Israeli strikes have hit a number of civilian buildings, including hospitals and health clinics, per Iranian officials. At least nine hospitals are no longer operational, Al Jazeera quoted Mohammad Jamalian, a member of Iran’s parliamentary health committee, as saying.
WHO sounds the alarm: World Health Organization (WHO) head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that Israeli attacks on Iranian oil facilities could have negative effects on public health and “risks contaminating food, water and air.”
Oil prices drop: After reaching four-year highs yesterday, oil prices fell back down to $98.96 per barrel following Trump’s temporary claim that the war on Iran could end soon.
But the war isn’t over: Trump posted on Truth Social on Monday night: “If Iran does anything that stops the flow of Oil within the Strait of Hormuz, they will be hit by the United States of America TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have been hit thus far.”
‘We will decide’: For Iran’s part, the country’s deputy foreign minister insistedTehran has “the upper hand,” and it will “decide when the war will end.”
Don’t Look Away: Israel Is Invading Lebanon
Smoke rises after an Israeli attack targeted the southern suburbs on March 9, 2026, in Beirut, Lebanon. Photo by Daniel Carde/Getty Images.
While the US and Israeli war on Iran rages on, and millions of Palestinians continue to face dismal conditions and persistent attacks in Gaza, Israel is alsoterrorizing Lebanon. Israeli forces have killed more than 450 people, including 83 children, in Lebanon just in the past week
Amid their reckless violence, Israeli forces have attacked United Nations peacekeepers and residential buildings. They killed 41 people, including children, while dressed up as Lebanese troops and searching for four-decade-old remains of an Israeli military pilot. Israel’s attacks have, according to Human Rights Watch, included the illegal use of white phosphorus, which ignites when exposed to oxygen and can light homes, farmland, and other buildings and infrastructure on fire. Some of the victims of Israel’s attacks on Lebanon include a Catholic priest and three paramedics.
All told, nearly 700,000 people in Lebanon have been forcibly displaced from their homes, including 200,000 children.
Imagine the entire population of Nashville, or Washington DC, being forced out of their homes. That is the scale of displacement Israel is inflicting, just in Lebanon alone.
*****
Trump also announced that America’s war on Iran won’t end until Bibi Netanyahu says it’s over. (He actually said it would be a joint U.S./Israeli decision, but it’s obvious who’s giving the orders here.)
For America, the U.S. Congress doesn’t declare war, Bibi Netanyahu does.
I saw this quip in a YouTube comments section: No matter who you vote for, you get Bibi Netanyahu as president. It makes sense. Recall Bibi’s visits to Congress and the rapturous (even stormy!) applause he always received.
Well, at least we know who’s controlling this war, and for all their posturing, it’s not bully boy Trump or punch’em when they’re down Hegseth.
Here are some macro ideas and thoughts about America’s latest war of choice with Iran:
1. It’s a war so call it that. It’s not “strikes” or “major combat operations.”
2. It’s an unconstitutional, illegal, immoral, and potentially escalatory war.
3. The war has no clear objective other than decapitation of the Iranian leadership (achieved?) and installation of a new regime that will play ball with USA/Israel. That latter outcome is extremely unlikely.
4. It’s a war for Israel to advance its regional hegemony.
5. In the main, the war is neither supported nor understood by the American people. That fact doesn’t seem to matter to the Trump administration.
6. For all those involved, the war will prove increasingly expensive in blood and treasure.
7. Recklessly begun, the war is utterly unpredictable in its final outcomes.
8. The war does not serve the national defense interests of the U.S., as Iran posed no imminent threat to U.S. national security.
9. With no clear Congressional mandate, the war lacks the critical support of the American people. Again, the Trump administration remains unconcerned here.
10. For these reasons, among others, there should be an immediate ceasefire followed by negotiations, leading to discussion of war reparations to be paid by the aggressors. (This scenario, I realize, is unlikely in the extreme.)
Yesterday, I went on “Judging Freedom” with Judge Andrew Napolitano to discuss the Iran War.
As I said to the Judge, I am still confused about America’s true rationale, its intent, and its goals, and I have no clear idea of how this war is going to proceed, let alone end. War is inherently unpredictable, much like fire. Trying to predict its path of destruction, what it will burn and what it will leave behind, and when it will end, is nearly impossible. We must work to contain and extinguish this new fire in the Middle East before it becomes an inferno that engulfs even wider areas, leading to yet more innocents dead.
I woke to the news that Israel/USA is launching attacks (New York Times) and strikes (NBC News) against Iran. The BBC used “joint attack” for the Israeli/U.S. war plan. Three sources, and all three avoiding that useful descriptive word, war.
I suppose Mr. Trump doesn’t have to ask Congress for a declaration of war since it’s not a war—it’s just attacks or strikes or “major combat operations,” as Trump said today.
“All I want is freedom for the [Iranian] people,” Trump also said. Once again, “freedom” is synonymous with war and death.
So perhaps Orwell had it wrong. It’s not war is peace; it’s war is freedom.
It’s funny: I’m listening to ABC News and they keep using the words “strike” or “joint strike” or “preemptive strike.” Or even “larger-scale strike.” Trump sees it as a “noble mission,” but not apparently a Nobel Peace Prize one.
So many lies, so much dishonesty, so much illegality.
Grim times.
If you can stand it, here’s Trump talking about Iran’s terror. Iran has “soaked the earth with blood and guts,” so he claims. I’m glad the USA is innocent of death and violence. No blood and guts from our military “strikes.”
It’s not a war. It’s just “strikes” or “attacks” or something
So remember America: Don’t speak of war. You have no say anyway. Just sit back and watch the strikes and attacks ordered by two paragons of virtue, Bibi Netanyahu and Donald Trump.
Update (2/28, Noonish)
The words of James Madison resonate here:
Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debt and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manner and of morals, engendered in both. No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare …
Allegedly, we’re bombing for freedom in Iran, even as freedom in America vanishes. Is it time to drop “freedom” bombs on ourselves?
Ask Americans (or any other people) being bombed if they think it’s conducive to greater freedom.
Who the hell wants to talk about genocide and man’s inhumanity to man?
I taught courses on the Holocaust, where I came across a two-volume encyclopedia of genocide (see list of references at the end). We humans have a remarkable record of killing each other (usually couched as killing the “other,” the “bad” people). That a two-volume encyclopedia of genocide exists says something truly horrendous about the human condition.
Far too often, a chosen people, a “master race,” decides to eliminate barbarians, inferiors, primitives, race enemies, whatever words are used to demonize other humans. Often, it’s said we must kill them before they kill us, so mass murder is defined and defended in terms of safety and security. The “bad” people force us to kill them. We don’t want to do it—they make us! And we hate them all the more for making us kill.
At the same time, mass murder is often quite profitable for the killers. In the Holocaust, the Nazis systematically stole everything from the Jews they were killing. They stole their houses and apartments, their businesses, their furniture, their jewelry, their clothing: everything they could get their greedy murderous hands on. In Gaza today and on the West Bank, we see Israel stealing land and most everything else from murdered and displaced Palestinians. The Israeli government justifies mass theft and mass death as a defensive war against barbaric terrorists, just as the Nazis saw themselves as being at war with inferior Jews and other racial undesirables like the gypsies.
The Nazis claimed the Jews were an existential threat to the “master race,” thus all Jews had to be killed, even women, children, and babies. The Israeli government claims Hamas is an existential threat to Jews and that all Palestinians are, more or less, members or supporters of Hamas and therefore must be eliminated (murdered or expelled). Women, children, babies: they’re all Hamas.
America has its own history of genocide. Various Native American peoples were murdered, shunted aside onto reservations, sent to “civilizing” schools that denied them their history and identity, most of their land stolen from them. This had to be done, the white man claimed, because the Indians were brutal savages, demonically so.
Today, there is great resistance (certainly among U.S. politicians) to the idea that Israel is conducting a genocide in Gaza. Most U.S. politicians prefer to think of it as a morally justifiable war against Hamas, and even if they don’t completely buy that, they give Israel everything it wants, weapons and money, to facilitate that genocide. Like Pontius Pilate, they wash their hands of blood shed in Gaza, blaming Hamas (or, perhaps for a few, quietly blaming Israel without daring to say it).
Anyhow, these musings came to me as I contemplated a short encyclopedia article I wrote on genocide about 25 years ago. What follows is that article.
GENOCIDE: Legal term coined in 1944 initially to define and condemn Nazi efforts to destroy, deliberately and systematically, Jews as well as Sinti and Roma (Gypsies) in the Holocaust. The term encompasses not only ethnic- and racially-motivated extermination but also cultural, national, and political. Although the term is fairly recent, genocidal practices are nearly as old as recorded history. Witness the Roman annihilation of Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War. Yet genocide as a category is usually applied to events of more recent history, with the Turkish persecution of Armenians during World War I providing a paradigm of ruthless and wholesale murder to extirpate an entire people. Accusing Armenians of being pro-Russian and envying their domination of eastern Anatolia, Turkish officials forced them to emigrate east across mountains in winter. Hundreds of thousands died of exposure, starvation, or in massacres; perhaps 1.5 million died in total from 1915 to 1923.
Josef Stalin’s persecution of Ukrainians in the 1930s also constituted genocide, as Stalin distrusted their political loyalty. By confiscating crops and seed grain and preventing emigration, Stalin consigned five million Ukrainians to early graves. Nazi extermination policies were more racially oriented, as Adolf Hitler considered Jews and Gypsies to be irredeemable biological menaces to the purity of Aryan blood. The machinery of death employed by Nazis—railroads and cattle cars, gas chambers and ovens—and the systematic pillaging and gleeful humiliation of victims set a despicably new standard for human barbarity. Six million Jews and half a million Gypsies died at the hands of this evil regime. The post-war Nuremberg Trials prosecuted a few of the more prominent architects of the so-called Final Solution, but many others escaped judgment.
Although the United Nations’ Genocide Convention (1951) made genocide a crime under international law, lack of military forces and international criminal courts to enforce the convention has crippled efforts to deter or punish perpetrators. Acts of genocide continued, whether by the Khmer Rouge in the Cambodian “killing fields” in the 1970s, where one million perished, or by Hutu extremists in 1994, who massacred 800,000 Tutsis in a matter of months as the international community wrung its hands. Events closer to Europe that endangered Western stability drew greater scrutiny. Thus in 1993 the UN created a War Crimes Tribunal to prosecute practitioners of “ethnic cleansing” in the former Yugoslavia. Despite a handful of convictions, prosecution and prevention of genocidal crimes remain serious challenges facing the international community in the twenty-first century.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bartov, Omer. Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide, and Modern Identity, Oxford, 2000.
Charny, Israel W. Encyclopedia of Genocide, 2 vols, Santa Barbara, CA, 1999.
Power, Samantha. “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide, New York, 2002.
Rosenbaum, Alan S., ed. Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide, Boulder, CO, 1998.
The scary part is that the official death toll of 76,134 is an undercount. So many bodies remain under rubble or just plain obliterated by bombs.
Of course, the so-called cease fire in Gaza is anything but as Israel continues its policy of not-so-selective killing and slow strangulation. If you suggest genocide is wrong, the predictable response from the Israeli-U.S. government is that you’re a Hamas terrorist sympathizer and probably an anti-Semite as well (the latter is true even if you’re Jewish).
Coincidentally, I just took a drink after typing that and started choking. OK, maybe that wasn’t a coincidence.
I remember during Catholic service we’d sing the hymn: “Whatsoever you do to the least my brothers, that you do unto me.” I guess they’re just empty words to all those avowed Christians in the government.
It’s been a busy week of news. Here are four items that stood out.
A group of Democratic members of Congress released a short video addressed to the U.S. military, reminding service members that they may refuse unlawful orders. President Trump denounced the video as “seditious behavior” and said such behavior was “punishable by death,” even resharing posts calling for the lawmakers to be hanged. The Democratic message itself was partisan and thin on specifics, but Trump’s response was far more troubling. U.S. troops already know they can and should refuse unlawful orders—though determining what is lawful in practice is rarely simple. What struck me most was the timing: Democrats issued this warning to the troops in response to Trump, but I don’t recall a similar concern when President Biden continued military support to Israel amid mounting accusations from human-rights bodies of grave—indeed, genocidal—violations in Gaza.
In sum, Congress should confront questionable executive actions directly rather than shifting responsibility to Lieutenant Smith or Corporal Jones.
The Trump administration has floated a 28-point plan to end the Russia-Ukraine War. Reports indicate the plan involved Russian input but did not include Ukraine or key European partners. Unsurprisingly, many provisions cross Ukraine’s stated red lines. Diplomacy is still preferable to endless war—jaw-jaw over war-war is a sound motto—but it’s hard to see this plan gaining real traction, especially when it seems designed more to satisfy Washington and Moscow than Kyiv.
One thing is certain: Ukraine is learning that when you dance with elephants, you’re likely to get trampled.
Marjorie Taylor Greene has announced her resignation from Congress, effective January 5, 2026. This surprised me. I read her resignation letter and, despite disagreeing with much of her politics, I respected her consistent opposition to regime-change wars and her outspoken criticism of Israel’s genocidal effort in Gaza and of the undue influence of AIPAC and similar lobbies. She is also right to highlight how far our government has drifted from serving America’s working and middle classes.
MTG, as unlikely as it sounds, is a viable candidate for the Republican nomination for President in 2028, assuming Trump obeys the Constitution and steps aside.
The UN Security Council has approved a U.S.-sponsored Gaza resolution, with Russia and China abstaining. Their decision not to veto suggests a calculation: let Washington bear responsibility for the consequences of its own neocolonial proposal. The plan itself looks like a thinly veiled endorsement of a murderous status quo—one that provides political cover as Gaza remains strangled and devastated. If the United States is now the guarantor of this “peace,” then it also owns the moral and political fallout. If anything, this “peace” plan will only provide cover for Israel’s ongoing genocide in slow motion.
Which brings me back to unlawful orders. Any U.S. service member asked to support actions that clearly violate international law has a duty to refuse. Yet the Democrats who admonished troops about unlawful orders seemed focused only on hypothetical abuses under Trump, not on real-world concerns about U.S. support for Israel’s genocidal operations in Gaza. For too many in Washington, unwavering support for Israel overrides legal, moral, and humanitarian considerations.
Readers, what did you make of this week’s events? One thing seems certain: we continue to live in “interesting times.”
Today, I was back on Judge Napolitano’s show, Judging Freedom. We talked about whether Israel is truly a U.S. ally and the increasing illegality of U.S. governmental actions under the Trump administration.
I tend to be more circumspect when I talk, more blunt when I write. The Judge asked me whether I thought the U.S. was a democracy; I suggested we were a quasi-democracy but what democracy was left was shriveling and withering under pressure from Trump and his minions.
Actually, America is an empire; we left our republic ideals behind soon after World War II, which is why President Dwight D. Eisenhower was issuing powerful warnings about the same in 1953 and 1961. America has always been a war-like nation; now we are increasingly consumed by war and its ever-present costs and burdens. I could have said more about that and wish I had.
In the rise, decline, and fall of empires, we are very much on the downslope even as leaders like Trump suggest that the way to make America great again is to win at war (no matter the morality and legality of our actions). In that sense, we have already lost—indeed, our so-called leaders wander, lost, in a grim and increasingly barbaric wilderness of their own making.
Sadly, there’s only one ship of state, and when the captain and most of his mates are lost at sea and reckless to boot, passengers like us are likely to go down with the ship with them.
I’ve taught military history “from Plato to Nato,” as we used to joke, but my expertise focused on technology and warfare. Along with “revolutions” and “transformations” in weaponry, I probably spent too much time focusing on “decisive battles” and “great captains” in history. When you look at the course of military history, most deaths from war didn’t come in battle. They came from hunger and disease, from famine and pestilence. Sometimes, mass starvation and pandemics were unintentional byproducts of chaos and societal disruption caused by war, and sometimes starvation and disease were intentional weapons and products of war.
And behold a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death
You might call this apocalyptic war, from the Bible and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which included famine and pestilence among the death riders.
An apocalyptic fate seemingly awaits Palestinians in Gaza. I’ve written about Gaza as a genocide, the mass bombing by Israel, the mass killing, with the apparent goal of forcing Palestinians out of Gaza, but I haven’t given enough thought to the use of mass starvation and diseases as weapons in this genocide.
A reader, Dan White, brought this lesson home to me, and I’d like to quote his message to me at length:
I can’t think of a better word than the etiology of starvation. It hasn’t been adequately addressed by the snoozemedia. Starvation death rates have a funny shaped curve. During the first stages of starvation–can’t give any figures on a time period for this or any other part of the process/curve, due to there being varying levels of food deprivation–there are few deaths, generally (but not always) those persons with compromised health/preexisting health problems that make them more susceptible to death than others in the population. After some (varying length) period of starvation, people start to die in larger numbers, and then all of a sudden, everyone is dying, and then everyone is dead. This period of death is fairly short compared to the period of starvation. Again, due to varying levels of starvation and varying levels of preexisting health and varying levels of surplus consumable body tissue in the starved group, this period has no fixed length, but it happens all of a sudden, and it doesn’t take long for everyone to die once it starts–couple of weeks seems common.
The starving residents of Gaza haven’t reached the mass-death stage of starvation, but it could well start happening tomorrow. I can’t say because I don’t know the food reserves preexisting, the food delivery figures since the ‘war’ started, and nobody in the news biz has bothered to look for them, either. There really should have been some government or multistate agency who has looked for them and published them, but nobody has.
When the mass-death stage hits, people in Gaza will be dying by the tens of thousands a week. Stopping the mass-death by all of a sudden providing food isn’t going to work very well, on account of logistical delivery problems and the medical problems of alleviating starvation at this advanced stage–folks’ digestive tracts may well not work well enough even if they get food. That will be the real genocide, and I’d bet money it happens, and bet more money that this is the real objective of Israel’s ‘war’ in Gaza. The notion of Israel’s war objective is displacement of Gazans is an absurdity–you want someone to leave, well they have to be able to walk, right? And they have to have a place to go. Israel is counting on the rest of the world to all of a sudden do a mass-evacuation of Gazans combined with a mass feeding and mass medical intervention all at the same time in order to prevent this mass death of Gazans from occurring? NFW–Israel’s leaders have accepted mass killing as an official state policy, and have commenced doing it, and do it as we speak. And Israeli hasbara [propaganda] will blame us for it, and a whole lot of whored-out American and European politicians, as well as Israel-worshipping American Jews, will go along with it.
What Dan White posits here is horrifying—and increasingly likely. Of course, as people are weakened through starvation, they become more susceptible to various diseases associated with famine and unsanitary conditions.
These “old” weapons of war—starvation and disease—will serve as the grimmest of reapers among the Palestinians in Gaza.
The “mass-death stage” of starvation is nearing, unless the U.S. and other countries intervene to force Israel to allow adequate food and medical supplies into Gaza. A failure to act will only spur the pale horse on whose back Death sits.
The LA Holocaust Museum recently suggested that “Never Again” is a fundamental lesson of the Holocaust. Then they took it back. Here’s the (almost) inconceivable story from Caitlin Johnstone:
Israel supporters are so crazy and evil that the Los Angeles Holocaust Museum recently retracted a statement saying “Never again can’t only mean never again for Jews” after objections from Zionists.
The museum issued a statement saying, “We recently posted an item on social media that was part of a pre-planned social media campaign intended to promote inclusivity and community that was easily open to misinterpretation by some to be a political statement reflecting the ongoing situation in the Middle East. That was not our intent. It has been removed to avoid any further confusion.”
Think about how gross your position has to be for you to be all hey, let’s say no genocide for ANYBODY, and then immediately have to come back and clarify that you definitely weren’t saying no genocide for the Palestinians.
I’m glad that’s clear! Talk about a profile in cowardice.
Then there are those who get testy about applying the word “genocide” to events in Gaza. Their distorted mouth noises sound something like this: Israel is at war with terrorists (Hamas) and *only* 70,000 or so Palestinians are dead so it’s not really a genocide, is it? Plus it’s all their fault because of October 7th, end of story.
For what it’s worth, I taught the Holocaust as a professor of history after attending a seminar at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Also, if it means anything, I’m Catholic, retired military, with no particular axe to grind.
Yes, it’s a genocide in Gaza. A holocaust in slow motion. Heck, Israeli leaders have freely confessed their goal is a final solution to the Gaza question, mainly by killing many Palestinians while forcing the rest to leave. (Whether they’ll have any place to go remains to be seen.)
There is no one model of genocide, and definitions also vary. But if what’s happening in Gaza isn’t a genocide, I don’t know what other word applies. Mass murder, perhaps? Extermination, but slowly? Ethnic cleansing and mass death followed by mass expulsion? That is genocide, plain and simple.
Welcome back, everyone. I hope you enjoyed Labor Day Weekend.
It’s grim times in America. Perhaps grimmest of all is the U.S. government’s support of genocide through mass killing and starvation in Gaza. “Never again” was the message of the Holocaust, not “Yes, again” if it benefits Zionists in Israel.
Americans, in the main, are against mass killing (at least, I hope we are), but what does it matter when all 100 senators take money from AIPAC and the Trump administration is rabidly pro-Israel? “Our” government isn’t ours; the man who gets what he wants with the loudest applause is Bibi Netanyahu. Talk about foreign interference in America’s elections and governance!
Courtesy of Lisa Savage at her Substack site
Why is it so hard for Americans to come together in sensible ways? A decade ago, I wrote about how we’re kept divided, distracted, and downtrodden. The letter D truly is for defective and deficient—disastrous as well—but permit me a little exercise in alliteration as I expand my D list to seven, as in the 7 habits of a highly defective country.
1. Divided: Are you Republican or Democrat? Red or Blue? MAGA or “libtard”? Woke or Anti-woke? Cis white male or BIPOC? Pro-life or Pro-choice? There are far too many labels and efforts that end in division. And we know how rulers use division to conquer.
2. Distracted: Wherever you look, Americans are bombarded with distractions, starting with the screens we carry everywhere with us. The Romans had bread and circuses; we have junk food, NASCAR, and the NFL. Curl up before that 75-inch TV and chow down.
3. Downtrodden: When you’re working 50+ hours a week, straining to make ends meet, suffering from high health care costs, student loan debt, and so on, it’s hard to pay attention to what’s going on in Washington—and even harder to act against it.
4. Discontented: Paradoxically, the discontentment so many of us feel is not resulting in significant political action. Instead, it’s being channeled in counterproductive ways. Consumer goods and drugs from big pharmaceutical companies are offered as palliatives to “cure” our discontentment. We buy more, or pop more pills, but contentment remains elusive.
5. Duopoly: Sure, Democrats and Republicans aren’t exactly the same. But when it comes to war, foreign policy, weapons sales, serving Israel, favoring billionaires, kowtowing to the big banks and Wall Street, and genuflecting to corporations, both parties are virtually indistinguishable. Both also work together to quash third parties. Small wonder that the largest voting bloc in America is Independent/Non-aligned.
6. Discouragement: Faced with that grim fact—a government completely unresponsive to ordinary people—Americans are discouraged from acting in dynamic and outspoken ways. Also serving to discourage political action is America’s increasingly militarized streets, now occupied with agents from Homeland Security and even armed members of the National Guard.
7. Despair: Remember “hope and change” Barack Obama and the surging idealism of 2008? Those were the days. Now it seems the mantra is “no hope” and change that only makes matters worse. This contributes to despair, our sense of hopelessness and helplessness before impersonal government forces—and this is deliberate. A weaponizing of despair.
So, what is to be done? On the small scale, get involved. Get educated. Follow protesters like Lisa Savage and Clif Brown. Small acts of protest can be contagious.
Clif Brown, taking a stand and sending a message
I do my thing here on Substack and belong to organizations like the Eisenhower Media Network and Space4Peace (The Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space). Since 2007, I’ve written against militarism and war at TomDispatch.com and similar alternative sites. Do what you can, what matches your talents, even if it’s just talking to your family, your friends, your neighbors about your concerns. (Believe me, that isn’t always easy!)
Maybe it’s easier to say where the answer isn’t coming from. It’s not coming from Democrats or Republicans. It’s not coming from Congress. It’s not coming from the richest among us, nor from corporate and financial elites.
Fundamentally, the first big step we need to take as a country is publicly funded elections. No more lobbyists. No more “legal” bribes. That requires a reversal of the SCOTUS Citizens United Decision. It requires legislation or a Constitutional amendment.
How to force that when war and weapons are bipartisan? When the powers that be are more than happy with the status quo? Probably only through mass organizations and protest. Or perhaps the creation of a viable third party–but that will be staunchly resisted by the duopoly (the Dems and Repubs).
The short answer is we need a lot more profiles in courage to counter the profiles in pusillanimity produced and elevated within a corrupt system.
The system as it exists today seems unreformable and unstoppable, but history teaches us that sometimes a crack can widen to a fault that leads to an earthquake quickly and unpredictably. So the only recourse is to keep fighting, to keep the pressure on, hoping those cracks will indeed lead to something greater.
Apathy and surrender are not options. Discouragement and despair mustn’t be our end state. Take inspiration from people like Lisa and Clif, the writing of people like Chris Hedges, and sites like Antiwar.com.
Bracing Views 