We started this week with some news flash about North Korea expanding its uranium enrichment capability. NBC talking heads were all on the job, rolling out the standard script on how the North Korean commies can’t be trusted, how they’ve done this with successive U.S. administrations from Clinton forward, and how they’ve rolled a feckless president Trump by flattering him, gaining a massive concession – essentially, the prestige of a summit with the U.S. president – in exchange for nothing. There’s broad agreement on this point on MSNBC, for example, meaning that everyone on the network who detests Trump, from National Review editors to Democratic party strategists, are saying roughly the same thing.
What emerges is the same bipartisan consensus that has driven bad foreign policy decisions through administrations of both parties for as long as I’ve been alive (and, in truth, longer). It feels to me very much like the assholes vs. the fuckers, and while I certainly don’t want the fuckers running everything, it’s hard to support the assholes and maintain my self-respect. Now, before someone accuses me of Jimmy Dore-like animus toward strategic voting (note: I always vote strategically, specifically to avert the avoidable and wholly predictable disaster that’s unfolding right now), I do have a slight preference for the assholes. But what we need is a radically new approach to national security and international relations – one that would make all of those pundits shake their heads.
This means more than simply not getting ourselves into “stupid” wars. This involves a deeper realization that we do not have the right to launch wars of choice under any circumstances. Radical change means a foreign policy that focuses on what’s good for people both inside and outside of our national borders, not just what’s good for U.S. based corporations and the rich people who own them. It means saying goodbye to the notion of an American empire and winding down the military machine, diverting resources to domestic economic security and international disaster relief efforts. It means owning the darker chapters of our history and being accountable for them as a nation.
Whatever we do in the short term to stanch the bleeding of this increasingly autocratic administration, we must keep a sharp vision in mind of where this country should go and seek to articulate that vision to our friends, our families, our co-workers, our neighbors, and strangers we meet. If we overcome our short-term problems in part by making common cause with people we disagree with, it’s essential that we keep our eye on a better future … one that they may not want at all.
luv u,
jp
Small wonder the heads on my antiquated cassette tape machine have picked up a charge; I’ve been running hours of tape through that thing as part of my summer project to archive and restore Big Green’s early recordings (1984-96) as well as some even more primordial stuff from the early 80s. Since practically all of the songs were recorded on analog audio cassette, which doesn’t hold up all that well over the decades, it’s just as well that I’m getting to this now. By the end of the process, I hope to have remastered early mixes of 150 to 200 songs, the vast majority written by my illustrious brother, Matt. That shiny tape makes for a bewildering trail (which is, in fact, pretty close to the title of one of those 200 songs).
This fact is about to be brought home to us all in a far more profound way: Justice Kennedy has announced that he will retire at the end of next month, and I have no doubt that Trump and McConnell will ram a nominee through the confirmation process faster than anyone can imagine. That will lock in a 5-4 reactionary majority on the Court that will be with us for a generation, reversing Roe v. Wade, detonating the remnants of the Voting Rights Act, and generally demonstrating that the Court cannot be relied upon to serve as a bulwark against aggressive extremism. I was never a big fan of Kennedy. Sure, he was the fifth vote on some crucial cases affecting LGBTQ rights and so on, but he is a stingy old stick who apparently isn’t even giving a second thought to allowing this unstable president to choose his successor.