Tag: Politics

Something Is Rotten in the States of America

Look No Further than Colossal Pentagon Spending and Perpetual War

BILL ASTORE

AUG 14, 2025

Something is Rotten in the States of America.

America’s war budget now exceeds $1 trillion a year—an almost unimaginable sum.

The Pentagon plans to spend $1.7 trillion “modernizing” a nuclear triad that should instead be downsized. A proposed “Golden Dome” missile defense system may cost $500 billion while making nuclear war more likely. And a “new” Cold War with China and Russia is already underway, with threat inflation as one of its defining features.

With military spending so high—and the military so valorized—Washington offers it as the solution to nearly everything: crime in D.C., eliminating drug cartels south of the border, containing China and Russia, “winning” in Somalia, preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons—the list is endless. Supporting and defending the Constitution, however, is rarely mentioned.

War has become America’s new normal. “Peace” is now a word that dare not speak its name. According to the Pentagon, the only peace worth pursuing is “peace through [military] strength.” A warrior ethos is marketed as if it were synonymous with democratic virtue.

I once called for a 10% reduction in Pentagon spending. That’s no longer enough. We need a 50% cut—we need a military dedicated to genuine national defense, not imperial dominance. Surely we can protect America for $500 billion a year rather than the $1 trillion we’re spending now.

Changing the narrative is crucial. Why do we need 750+ bases overseas? Why expand our nuclear arsenal when we already have 5,000 warheads? We don’t need these things—they are the hallmarks of wasteful militarism. They escalate tensions, endanger us, and drain the nation’s wealth.

And why do we have 17 or 18 intelligence agencies? Despite all that intelligence, we still lost in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Where is the accountability? Why are no generals relieved of command for such failures? In fact, they’re more likely to fail upwards.

“All governments lie,” as I.F. Stone warned. Combine that with the truth that war’s first casualty is truth itself, and you begin to see the rot in America today. Perpetual war fuels deception and government overreach. Almost anything can be justified when the cry is, “We’re at war!”—even when the reasons for going to war are false.

Consider the Gulf of Tonkin incident—revealed later as phony—and the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War. Consider Iraq’s mythical WMDs. Consider the lies revealed in the Afghan War Papers. Consider the weasel words of generals like David Petraeus, forever hedging “gains” as “fragile” and “reversible.” Consider the U.S. military’s record since World War II—generally ineffective because there’s been little accountability for failure. (And yes, civilian leaders share the blame.)

The military-industrial complex grows ever more powerful, sidelining the American people while democracy withers.

Something is rotten in the States of America.

Many thanks to Judge Napolitano for asking me to discuss some of these issues on his show, “Judging Freedom.”

The Russia-Ukraine War Goes On and On

Neocons and Weapons Makers Are Happy

BILL ASTORE

JUL 19, 2025

Roughly three and a half years have passed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the war shows little sign of ending. President Trump has gone from boasting he could end the war in a day to following the policy of the Biden administration in providing weapons and aid to Ukraine. To most Americans, the war has become background noise, barely perceptible. Most Ukrainian flags have been put away or deleted from Facebook and similar social media sites.

If you’re looking for a primer on the war that’s both critical and balanced, check out Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies’ book, “War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict,” now available in a revised and expanded second edition. ($20 paperback; $10 ebook, from OR Books.)

Benjamin and Davies recognize the war didn’t erupt out of nowhere in February 2022 nor was it completely “unprovoked.” As much as they deplore and denounce Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade, they recognize Putin had his reasons. Putin is more rational actor than a power-hungry dictator, and he’s arguably driven more by securing Russia’s position (and regional dominance) than recreating a Tsarist Russian or Soviet empire. Unlike most American commentators, Benjamin and Davies favor a diplomatic solution that would end mass killing on both sides. Not surprisingly, their views have gained little traction in the pro-war, anti-Putin mainstream media.

Speaking of the U.S. mainstream media, NBC News posted an article yesterday citing Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State under President George W. Bush. An unrepentant neocon, Rice is happy that Trump is sending more weapons to Ukraine while threatening more sanctions as well. In short, Trump is following a traditional neocon script while also keeping weapons factories in the U.S. going full blast. Rice approves!

What I found most staggering from Rice was this claim cited by NBC: 

Rice also criticized the Biden administration for, in her view, having taken its time to get desperately needed weapons to Ukraine from the outset. “If you had given them everything at the beginning of the war,” she said, when “the Russians were on their back foot, [Ukraine] could’ve won this war outright.”

Excuse me, but WTF? What does giving Ukraine “everything” at the beginning of the war in 2022 mean? Fighter jets, main battle tanks, long-range missiles, nuclear weapons? Ukraine wasn’t even an ally of the U.S., nor was it ever a part of NATO. And would Ukraine really have won the war against Russia with “everything”? What about the risk that Russia would have escalated as well, perhaps calling on its arsenal of 6000 or so nuclear weapons? 

Rice’s call for more smoking guns to have been sent to Ukraine early in 2022 almost certainly would have ended in a mushroom cloud or two. But I suppose that’s OK with her as long as the mushroom clouds were limited to Ukraine.

Remember 2023 and the failure of the much-hyped Ukrainian counteroffensive? I do. Remember all the hype about U.S., German, and British wonder weapons like Abrams, Leopard, and Challenger tanks? I do.

Let’s hope that Trump’s gambit to push Putin to some kind of compromise settlement bears fruit. No war should go on forever. Haven’t enough people died on both sides?

Trump Can’t Drain the Swamp–He Is the Swamp

The Jeffrey Epstein Case

BILL ASTORE

JUL 17, 2025

Chris Hedges has a superb show on the case of Jeffrey Epstein:

Donald Trump, along with other “luminaries” like Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, is deeply implicated in the pedophilia ring run by Jeffrey Epstein. Naturally, there will be no accountability for their actions. Epstein, of course, was most likely executed in his prison cell (the cameras mysteriously didn’t work; the guards mysteriously disappeared).

Trump promised accountability through his attorney general, Pam Bondi. Now, Trump is saying there’s nothing to see here, folks. That attitude has produced dissent within the MAGA ranks, even as Trump says he doesn’t need the dissenters while blaming the Democrats (!) for the Epstein coverup.

As Nick Bryant says in the interview above, Kompromat is nothing new in DC politics. It goes back to the founders and Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, if not before then. Compromised people, of course, are easily controlled through blackmail. Rumor has it the Mossad may be involved, but who knows?

Interestingly, Democrats have been largely silent on Trump’s problems here. The reason is obvious: pedophilia is bipartisan in DC, as are coverups.

As one person quipped on YouTube, there are more than 1000 victims here (mainly underage girls/teens), two pimps, and zero clients. Epstein’s pedophilia ring lasted more than 25 years, but the only people punished were Epstein himself (executed in prison) and Ghislaine Maxwell (20-year prison term, mainly for child sex trafficking). It’s likely she was told to keep her mouth shut for preferential treatment (e.g. she lives in a dormitory rather than being confined to a prison cell).

As Nick Bryant notes in the interview, if the victims seek compensation, they have to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) stating they can’t name names of their clients. Evidence suggests as well that some victims were as young as ten, if not younger.

Whether Trump and Bondi can continue to suppress this case remains to be seen. One thing is certain: Trump has not come to drain the swamp—he is the swamp.

“There is no America, there is no democracy”

Thoughts on Gaza and the Profitability of Genocide

BILL ASTORE

JUL 10, 2025

I sent this somewhat despairing note to a friend this morning:

It remains unclear to me whether the U.S. government kowtows to Israel (for all the reasons we know, like AIPAC), or whether Israel is a sort of cat’s paw for U.S. imperial and corporate interests. Maybe it’s not about nations and borders, as the famous speech from “Network” put it, but rather resources and profit, whether oil, water, weapons, and the like. The people of Gaza are simply in the way and entirely expendable to these larger interests. Naturally, propaganda is skillfully used to portray just about every Palestinian as a Hamas terrorist. Then, as you noted, there’s a media blackout on Gaza in most U.S. mainstream media sources.

Short of revolution, I don’t see any changes coming. The Democrats, of course, are just as happy to serve Israel and corporate interests.

This is the famous scene from “Network” featuring a brilliant performance by Ned Beatty:

If the world is a “college of corporations” (heck, even Harvard is a corporation) and if business and money is the universal lubricant, the Palestinians in Gaza are both good and bad for business. They are “good” in the sense that money can be made from killing them, concentrating them, monitoring them, expelling them, and so on. Speaking and documenting this horrendous truth got Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine, sanctioned by the U.S. government, as Lisa Savage noted here.

They are “bad” for business with respect to the gas fields off Gaza. Those marine gas reserves are likely worth $5 billion or more, money that would have done much to alleviate poverty in Gaza. Of course, Israel wasn’t about to allow Palestinians in Gaza to share in this bounty. Getting rid of Palestinians is a means to the end of completely dominating future trade in gas and other commodities in the Levant Basin.

I’ve been wondering why Great Britain is at great pains to help the Netanyahu government—then I noted that British Petroleum is one of the giant corporations that Israel granted a license to for future gas exploration. Coincidence?

Now, unlike Ned Beatty above, I’m not saying everything is explained by money and currency flows as “the primal forces of nature.” But it’s always a good idea to follow the money. It’s a ghastly business indeed when genocide makes money, but there you have it. A large part of the Holocaust in World War II was Germans and their fellow travelers taking everything from the Jews before they killed them. Profit from death factories—a grim truth I care not to contemplate, but it happened. Mass death can be a huge money-maker, and those pulling the strings couldn’t care less about body counts. Quarterly profits—now those they care about.

This suggests a strategy for activism—except efforts at BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) are heavily resisted by the powers that be. Surprise! You can find out more about the BDS movement here.

When protests are bad for business, that’s when the powerful pay attention. Powerful people already know the truth—they do everything in their power to determine what is “true”—so they’re not interested in right or wrong. What’s “right” is what makes money and what’s wrong, very wrong, loses money. You can’t appeal to their collective conscience (Good luck with that!), but you can possibly appeal to or cut into their collective profits.

Too cynical? What say you, readers?

“Jew-Hater”

Strange Days in America

BILL ASTORE

JUL 09, 2025

I didn’t know I was a “Jew-hater” until I suggested in a comment that giving Bibi Netanyahu everything he wants (and then some) might not be the same as serving the national interests and security needs of the United States. Well, there, I said it. Maybe Bibi shouldn’t get all the bombs and weapons and support he wants, whenever he wants and whatever Israel does with them.

And for that, I became a “Jew-hater.” I guess because I wasn’t 100% subservient to Bibi.

These are strange days in America. Congress can’t jump to its collective feet quickly enough to applaud Bibi. Members of Congress proudly display Israeli flags outside their offices. Heck, a few members of Congress (notably Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania) aren’t happy unless they literally wrap the Israeli flag around their bodies.

Senator Fetterman (on the right) shows the proper deference to Israel

What gives? What accounts for this madness?

Oh, I know some of the reasons. AIPAC. Christian evangelicals looking to the Second Coming. All the money ($100 million and more) Miriam Adelson gave to Donald Trump. All the profits to be made from weaponry and war. The corporate media, bought and paid for by billionaires. And so on. Yet something deeper, more insidious, seems to be at work here.

We used to have the “America, love it or leave it” crowd. Now we have the “Israel, love it—or else” crowd. In America!

Of course, ad hominem attacks like “Jew-hater” are meant to distract from real issues. People call you names when they can’t think of intelligent and persuasive ways of challenging your arguments. Yet this is America, after all, where much of our discourse (such as it is) consists of name-calling and other forms of insults and slander.

Honestly, I loved the response of another commenter to the “Jew-hater” epithet. The person simply typed: YAWN.

If you’re willing to think or write critically about Israel and the actions of its government and leaders, which indeed every American (and Israeli) should be, be prepared to be attacked as a Jew-hater, an anti-Semite, or worse. It comes with the territory. Even my Jewish friends who write critically are not immune. They, of course, are dismissed as “self-hating Jews.”

Fortunately, it appears most Americans today are onto the game that’s being played here. Progress, of a sort, even as Bibi continues to get everything he wants. Now Bibi says he’ll nominate Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Did I say these are strange days?

Remember When the Balanced Budget Amendment Was A Thing?

$37 Trillion in Debt and Counting

BILL ASTORE

JUN 30, 2025

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

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

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

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

Who needs health insurance, am I right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Donald Trump, Insulter-in-Chief

Teenage Boys Playing “Risk” Lead America!

BILL ASTORE

JUN 27, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 12-Day War?

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

BILL ASTORE

JUN 24, 2025

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

GOD BLESS THE WORLD!

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

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

*****

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A friendly “plane wave”? More theater?

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

U.S. Strategy in Iran

BILL ASTORE

JUN 22, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Demonizing the Opposition

The Abyss Beckons

BILL ASTORE

JUN 15, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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