Venezuela: It's About Democracy. No, Wait, It's Something Else

“It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.”

---U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton, 1/28/19, on Trish Regan Prime Time, Fox Business Report 

Bulletins From The Garlic!. Stolen From Major Media Mind Molesters!

Homer Simpson To Join Democratic Candidate List For 2020.

“OMG! We have a reality TV president and now it’s time for a cartoon TV president,” said campaign coordinator Hilary D. Plorable.

“OMG! Homer can help bring white working class voters back to the party and family photos of The Simpsons along with their gay, black, Indian and other supporting cartoon characters from the cast will charm the millions who still love the show. OMG! It’s  going to take lots of money, even with the family’s great name recognition, so can you donate ten, twenty or thirty dollars now, with more to come later? OMG! Are you as excited as we are? OMG!

Trump Charged With Treason: This Time It’s China!

Observers claim the president was seen in close conversation with a waiter at a Chinese restaurant in Georgetown and the Washington Police, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA and Girl Scouts of America were all immediately notified of this possible act of treachery if any part of their conversation was about computer electronics and not the Dumpling Special at Danny's Dim Sum Diner.

Trump Farts in Central Park: Times/CNN/MSNBC Charge Lethal Gas Attack: NY Jews Fear Second Holocaust!

Trump spokesperson claims he is the greatest most brilliant friend Israel and Zionist American Jews have ever had and fart was innocent result of eating too much Chinese Food.

Southern Poverty Law Center charges anti-Asian bigotry and threatens multi-billion dollar lawsuit. ACLU offers to defend Trump, immediately suffers loss of most donors and files for bankruptcy. Russian and Chinese billionaires offer help. Liberals call for impeachment. Conservatives call for lunch at Chinese Restaurants. Moderates order pastrami from delis in support of Jews suffering anti-Semitic Trump attacks.

In an unrelated culinary identity group ploy, People of Color Inc. join with Gay Inc. and Gender Fluidity Inc. to demand Taco-Pizza-Burger stands owned by Muslims on Wall Street and in front of all banks.

As the only people without color in the human race, Albinos demand equal rights, claim corn dog, hot dog and running dog wagons should be dispensing free food to all people of no color.

All global humans of color (99.9% of race) protest exclusion of Albinos, chant “me too” and join forces to rid the planet of liberal, progressive, populist, conservative, right wing, no wing, brain dead and upper class college graduate Americans.

OMG! Stay Tuned! OMG!

Venezuela - Capitalist Success, Not Socialist Failure

A "democratic" U.S. government legally elected by a minority of the vote is now calling for democracy in Venezuela by attempting to overthrow its government,  which was recently elected by a more than two-thirds vote after a highly-fragmented political opposition abstained from participation (on U.S. instructions) because it lacked popular support and felt that it was unlikely to win. The point man for the regime change operation is Elliott Abrams, whose biography tells us everything we need to know to evaluate the alleged democratic intentions of the Trump administration.

A fire-breathing fanatic for imperial Israel who championed the invasion and destruction of Iraq, Abrams was formerly Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights for the Reagan administration, and famously called U.S./Salvadorean death-squad operations that produced tens of thousands of mutilated civilian corpses (1979-1994) a "fabulous achievement." He also claimed that the Nicaraguan contras, famous for torture, rape, and murder in a campaign to overthrow the socialist government of Nicaragua, would one day  be fondly remembered as "folk heroes." Today he is a member of the board of directors of the National Endowment for Democracy, which was created to be a continuation of CIA skullduggery by other means, and currently finances Washington's destabilization efforts not only in Venezuela, but also in Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Cuba. Convicted of lying to Congress about Iran-Contra, Abrams called his prosecutors "filthy bastards," dismissed the proceedings as "Kafkaesque," and denounced the members of the Senate Intelligence Committee as "pious clowns." After hearing Abrams' testimony, then Missouri Senator Thomas Eagleton expressed a common reaction: "I want to puke." 

So much for Washington seeking democracy, as though we didn't already know. For the plain fact is that there is more democracy in Venezuela now, where members of the vast poor majority can be routinely found in animated political discussion of the events that shape their lives, than there has ever been in the United States, where the poor are deliberately excluded from representation or even consideration, and have therefore long since dismissed politics as a sensible concern.

But if not democracy, what then is the U.S.'s motivation in Venezuela? Well, Venezuela has large gold and nickel reserves, along with the largest oil supply in the world. Gaining control of such resources is an attractive prospect for any U.S. president, but especially for one under siege from multiple investigations and constant media questioning of his legitimacy. Making America great again by plundering Venezuela oil supplies would be an imperial achievement that the entire U.S. political class would admire. Witness Nancy Pelosi reaching across the aisle to tweet support for the coup right off the bat, to wit: "America stands by the people of #Venezuela as they rise up against authoritarian rule and demand respect for human rights and democracy." Who says Trump and the Democrats can't get along?

Though the current coup in Venezuela has roots going back to 2002 (when President Chavez was kidnapped and nearly killed by the U.S. backed "opposition"), long before any economic crisis was even on the horizon, giddy triumphalists of American Empire stridently declare that the Venezuelan crisis proves nothing more than the "failure of socialism." Ignoring the deliberate U.S. policy of sowing economic chaos, they denounce the Bolivarian Revolution as  a sham on the grounds that its supposed beneficiaries are now allegedly suffering mass starvation due to lunatic Marxist policies run amok. 

Except that there is no mass starvation, the mass Chavista base remains intact, and the Venezuelan economy is overwhelmingly in private hands.

In other words, the entire thesis of "socialism has failed" is a propaganda offensive, not a news story. And those who try to make Venezuela a news story by getting out the real facts on the ground are regularly threatened with being burned alive by the U.S.-led political opposition now claiming it wants to re-establish democracy in Venezuela. In recent years it has attacked and killed dozens of poor black Chavistas in the streets (often torched), attempting to provoke police responses that can subsequently be denounced as socialist "authoritarianism." Imagine the reaction in the United States if a foreign power were sowing arson and murder in the U.S. in an effort to force Trump out of office for having lost the popular vote in 2016. We'd launch a nuclear war.

There are, of course, real economic issues, such as hyper-inflation and food shortages. However, the shortages are often of staple items produced by a handful of companies that withhold them from the market as a form of class warfare. In any case, the crippling sanctions imposed by the Obama administration in 2015 on the ludicrous pretext that Venezuela represents a national security threat to the United States have made the situation worse, not better (as intended). 

With the Trump administration now extending the sanctions to the energy sector, a solution could become outright impossible. About one-third of Venezuelan exports are to the United States, and Venezuela meets about 40% of its economic needs through the foreign exchange it earns by exporting. If it can't export to the U.S. it suffers a huge loss of income that previously went for purchasing imports. This is the heart of Washington's longstanding "make the economy scream" strategy previously successfully employed in Chile (1973) to overthrow a socialist government and install a dictator (Augusto Pinochet), who promptly initiated a bloodbath.  

To make a long story short, the current crisis has been meticulously planned, nurtured, and yearned for for years by U.S. imperial strategists, who are now perfectly delighted, not appalled, by the crisis. For them to call the situation a failure of socialism is like the Boston strangler pronouncing his strangled female corpses a failure of feminism.

There is nothing to discuss with the Venezuelan opposition, which is obviously only interested in the complete eradication of the Bolivarian Revolution, the detested policy of meeting the needs of Venezuela's poor black and Indian majority with Venezuelan oil revenue. It would be nothing less than treason to collaborate with these right-wing demagogues. At the same time, however, it would be suicidal to pretend that the U.S. is not exploiting real popular disenchantment with Chavez and Maduro's economic policies, especially Maduro's exchange controls.

But let's let Venezuelans solve their problems for themselves, not force them to submit to imperial ultimatums.

Postscript: With John Bolton talking about privatizing Venezuelan oil, it is clear that more is at stake than just overturning the entire Bolivarian revolution. Venezuelan oil was nationalized in 1976, so Bolton's plans are to reverse the last 43 years of history.



Sources for this article:

Terry J. Allen, "Public Serpent: Iran Contra Villain Elliott Abrams Is Back," In These Times, August 2001

Abby Martin, Greg Wilpert, and  Paul Jay,"Attempted Coup in Venezuela" Real News Network, January 25, 2019 

William Blum, "Trojan Horse: The National Endowment For Democracy," www.williamblum.org

William Blum,"Killing Hope: U.S. Military And CIA Interventions Since World War II,"  Common Courage Press, 1995

Brendan O'Brien, "Venezuela's opposition is not so innocent," The Guardian, August 18, 2017

Interview with Maduro, Ignacio Ramonet and President Nicolas Maduro, The Greanville Post, January 24, 2019, reprinted by The Axis of Logic

"Venezuela Propaganda Debunked - People Are Against Coup," Jimmy Dore Show, January 27, 2019 

Aram Aharonian, "In Spite of Its Failures, The United States Continues International Offensive Against Venezuela," January 28, 2019, www.rebelion.org (Spanish)

Argumentum Ad Venezuelum, BadMouseProductions, You Tube, August 30, 2017

For more on Venezuela, see:

"Imperial Demon Watch:  Hugo Chavez", Legalienate, August 4, 2007

"Hugo Chavez, Lion of the Left," Legalienate, March 8, 2013

We Don’t Need A New Deal: We Need A Whole New Deck

We Don’t Need A New Deal: We Need A Whole New Deck

The gap between the earth’s wardens of wealth and the nearly eight billion humans under their control has grown wider and more dangerous but is beginning to be understood by some as a systemic problem and not simply a matter of evil leaders and villainous followers. When people see and feel their futures ranging from problematic at best to non-existent at worst, we get the resultant turmoil and changes taking place in nations moving in many directions at once but all of them against established power over things as they are.

Whether votes are cast in elections labeled democratic though still under minority control, or issues are subject to mob rule of one extreme or another, they are producing governments at least rhetorically dedicated to change even if often dangerously confused or in merely cosmetic form. Nevertheless, those demanding change beyond simply continuing the rule of market forces under minority control are starting to move up and into more commanding roles in governments. Unfortunately, and especially in America, many still operate as though political change amounts to the candidates skin tone, religion or sex, neglecting the philosophy between their ears by concentrating more on the genitals between their thighs.

Thus we have working people going to the polls and electing representatives of wealth operating against their interest but rhetorically speaking of change, which may mean reverting to earlier forms of capital private profit which still leave the public good in poor condition, or worse, sinking into megalomaniacal rule under populists (?) promising to dump even more wrath on those at or near the bottom. Meanwhile, more social democratic forms of capital rule which see the need for avoiding revolution by sharing a little more with the multitudes beginning to loudly complain, are also moving into positions of governmental power. This lesser evil of earlier stages, once called a “new deal” at capitalism’s last sign of collapse, is now dubbed a “green” new deal, in the face of   massive environmental threats only denied by the brain dead among private profiteers, as in the old days when realistic capital supported social democracy even while the troglodytes of capital insisted it was dreadful socialism.

This dichotomy still exists between those who would save the system that most benefits a minority rather than transform it into truly expressing the desires and needs of the majority. Neo-liberal-conservative elements panic at the thought of real democracy enabling all people to survive without having personal trust funds, family inheritance, or earning the salary rewards of work performed on behalf of those with personal trust funds and family inheritance. Rhetorical rule has managed minds into believing in ideals of democracy while materially accepting imitations that don’t even come close.

While national uprisings against despotic tyranny are important parts of past history, the present situation in which a global consciousness is growing that humanity and not just one or another national or identity group must move in the direction of taking control is a new experience for the race. It is being opposed more strongly by the beneficiaries of market forces under the control of creatures akin to gods by comparison to ordinary mortals as the dangers grow more serious. Among the brighter signs are progress towards ending the empire of the west but weaponry beyond imagination controlled by warriors beyond belief threatens humanity as never before.

The reactions coming from global GHQ of international capital are indicative of hysteria bordering on dementia tending towards stark raving insanity. And this from both sides of the ruling coin, with conservatives blathering about socialism and genocidal democracy resulting from wimpy policies merely asking how so few can be so rich while so many are so poor, and what passes for a liberal left more concerned for scandalizing a president and whining about an alleged Russian menace while debt approaches 22 trillion and Israel all but owns the white house and congress. Almost daily screeching about the alleged treachery of the present occupant at the white house, intrigue emanating from the Kremlin endangering all of humanity, and other stories captivating to prisoners of consciousness control threaten to create lynch mobs out of decent people and mass murderers out of frightened crowds.

The solutions offered by many in the face of environmental degradation are all to often connected to the political economics that have created that condition, hoping to somehow clean up filth by covering it with nicer dirt. Thus we have solutions to carbon pollution proposed that charge a price for creating it to somehow limit its production, which is like combating rape by charging a fee for its performance. When we need to totally transform the environment from one dependent on fossil fuel to one running on natural forces like air, wind, water and the sun, too often private profit is expected to do the job when that fanatic focus is already threatening the public good more than at any time in the past.

Back in the 19^th century, many social critics warned of what might happen to the earth and its people if the social system of industrial capital continued. Karl Marx was foremost among them and his analysis went beyond anyone else’s and still holds true. They all understood that minority rule based on inherited power and the wealth it controlled was a menace but its newest form, not yet labeled capitalism, was the most malevolent yet. We live in the age in which it has become more obvious to hundreds of millions whose everyday lives are filled with misery and deprivation while a tiny group absorbs most of society’s wealth and shares a bit of it with a class of well paid servants who play the role of pacifying the populace from taking any political action or destroying it in wars when it does.

Whether at Vegas, on the Riviera, or at card tables run by religious groups, when the house seems to be winning even more than usual, one of the gamblers will call for a new deal. This simply means re-shuffling the deck so that cards appear in a slightly different order. At extremes, someone will demand a new deck, but even this only means new cards will be used, but with all of the same suits and numerations as the old. This is the problem with allegedly trying to call for “new” proposed solutions but without moving from a private profit first system to one that demands the public good as primary. Society needs to demand a new deck with different cards, removing the old ones like poverty, war, and racism and replacing them with peace, humanity and the common good. Continuing to reshuffle the old or even replacing it only with new forms that change immaterial labels but maintain material substance will only work to appease some until the next breakdown.

The one coming may be worse than any before, and global action needs to be taken with humanity connected as never before. It is not only possible but necessary, which is why the owners of the Casino are working hard to see to it that all dealers remain under their employ, in governments all over the world, and why citizens and nations must ultimately cross boundaries not simply to escape poverty and war in one place by hiding in another, but to live together in another kind of world which will only arrive if we create it. The next period will hopefully show that we are capable.

Trump Calls For U.S. Withdrawal From Syria, Corporate Media Goes Nuts

". . . while the jumble of information and speculation about Trump's possible Syria maneuverings doesn't necessarily tell us a whole lot, the reaction to it tells us why the world looks the way it looks. The most powerful military force in the history of civilization inflicts violence and domination with total impunity and total disregard for national sovereignty, demanding total respect for its own borders and total compliance from all nations outside its border. Nations which obey are absorbed into an alliance that is so tight and streamlined it can effectively be called an empire, while nations which disobey are invaded, occupied, disrupted and destroyed. 

"We've got to evolve beyond this mentality of intrusive domination which is so aggressively promoted as normal by the mass media. The idea that it's okay for a powerful nation to insert its military force into a weaker nation in order to manipulate geopolitical dynamics to its advantage is a sickness, and we need to heal it."

-----Caitlin Johnstone, Reactions To Trump's Syria Withdrawal Plan Say More Than The Plan Itself

Wake From The Nightmare Or Eternal Sleep For Humanity

“The tradition of the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the minds of the living.”   Karl Marx

Wake From The Nightmare Or Eternal Sleep For Humanity   

Marx offered a thought for all seasons but one that might especially ring true during what is supposed to be a season of peace, joy and humanity. Contradicted by the ever more insanely harsh reality of marketing mass murder under the guise of creating freedom, much of our race, though still too few to radically transform the totality of our reality, has begun to rise in defense of all against a system that profits only a few. France’s recent experience was part of a hopeful trend in that segments of a public which has been bought, sold and rented into near poverty showed they are tired and demanded social justice over becoming what capital sees as a loss of its private profits. Their awakening from humanity’s nightmare, however brief it may seem, is inspiring as well as overdue. The actions of a predominately working class group of citizens demonstrating with enough fervor to force the French government to at least renege on some issues is in stark contrast to Americans trooping off to the polls to “resist” a personality while their system – the same one the French are up in arms about – disintegrates all around them. If we have anything to be happy about during the annual shopping frenzy of an alleged spiritual time for humanity, in a small way it’s a few changes in our congress, but in a greater way it’s the sign of awakening we see in France which will hopefully spread to more places in the New Year.

The social democratic salvation capital arranged after the depression of the twenties and thirties has collapsed and become a renewal of the worst forms of fascist capital that preceded and soon followed that brief cosmetic safety for some made possible only by the reduction to disfigured ugliness of others. The rise in status of a new middle class for millions in the western world was only possible with the misery of greater multitudes in what was called the third, or undeveloped world, but also the poverty class in that same west. There were people sleeping on the streets of America before, during, and after the last breakdown of capital given the brand name “the great depression”. This latest collapse that began in 2008 and is very possibly the last one that will wake up more than the French is only different in that it is worse and the numbers in the street have grown so much only the intellectually and morally blind cannot see them.

The wealth accumulation of the return to market fundamentalist roots was and continues to be shared by a shrinking minority while growing majorities have seen the facade of humanity brought about by social democratic capitalism dissolve in the reality of a take-no-prisoners brand of marketing. This Artificially Intelligent farce not only prides itself on the creation of poverty and warfare but dulls the sense of many of its innocent subjects by filling heads with propaganda that passes for news, entertainment to distract consciousness further, and the combination of the two that marketers call “infotainment”.

Thus we have a perverse form of capital therapy that herds us into near frenzied lynch mobs of genuinely frustrated and set upon souls directing energy at everything but the cause of most if not all the things that plague us. Rich individuals approaching deity status with economic powers beyond those of past royal despots are relatively invisible while some of their employees in government attract enough attention to be replaced by other of their employees who appeal to one or another interest or identity group affording pleasure to some, pain to most and continued ruling power to the incredibly rich minority at the top of the modern pyramid of capital. 

Preposterous stories blaming Russia, China, Iran and possibly the Tooth Fairy for every sign of failure in what passes for a language perversion called the “free world” confuse and convince enough among the well fed and supposedly educated classes for the moment. When hardship eventually hits them in a material, rather than mental way, they will hopefully leave their identity groups and join the human race in the work necessary to transform global society.

Until the public good comes before private profit, things will get worse for all of us and any focus that continues separation of humans from potential majorities into smaller identity groups is simply the age old divide and conquer strategies always employed by minority rulers. This helps lead people with individual moral codes that find poverty and injustice intolerable to not only tolerate but to practice the most dreadful social policies imaginable. Privately, we Americans are as good, kind, compassionate, decent, and humane as any people on earth. Socially, however, we spend trillions on war, billions on pets, leave millions to live in poverty and hundreds of thousands to live on the street, and thus collectively become among the most degenerate moral perverts on the planet.

The skin tone, ethnicity, religion, sex or sexual preference of those serving capital while eating meals and flushing toilets at the white house or in slightly lesser roles in congress makes no difference to their victims reduced to cleaning the debris of death and destruction in the places where they oversee the bombing and looting. After their homes and nations are ruined we welcome some of them as migrants offering us cheap labor and a balm for our souls to maintain holiday spirit until the next slaughter we conduct. Food, clothing and shelter are basic human needs, not separate identity practices. They become so under private profit first economics that assure only some of the public will experience good, and that group is shrinking. The only way to assure a better life for all is for the ruling power to come from people who put the public good first, before any private gain is considered. Everyone has to be assured of food, clothing and shelter before anyone can aspire and work for even more by achieving private profit at the market. There is only one way to achieve that change and end society’s nightmare: the democratic forces of humanity must replace the market forces of capital. Happy New Year.

2018 in Review, If You Can Stand It

The year was only hours old when a "bomb cyclone" dumped massive snowfalls across the eastern U.S., just the latest in extreme weather events that portended a harrowing if not grim human future. Nevertheless, corporate media attention continued to be riveted on Donald Trump's Tweetstorms instead of emerging climate catastrophe, highlighting the establishment's preference for indulging political hatred of a legally elected president over bringing proper attention to an issue that could destroy prospects of civilized existence. Try as one might, it was difficult to square such perverse priorities with the media's alleged public watchdog role. 

 A few weeks later in his State of the Union address, Trump reiterated his call for "a great wall along the southern border," while once again taking no action on the silly proposal. The usual accusation of "nativist" was quickly heard, but commentators neglected to point out that if anything like a Trump Wall ever does get built it will be to hold back the rising ocean, not Latin American peasants, who will benefit from the massive increase in construction jobs the mammoth barrier will create. Like so much else in the Trump political arsenal, the Wall is a distraction.

In February, Julian Assange unsuccessfully attempted to have his UK arrest warrant dropped, and once again the corporate media silence was deafening. Assange, holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for practicing journalism without a license, was doing the investigative work reporters are supposed to do but rarely manage to, especially on U.S. national security policy, which Assange has relentlessly exposed. Professional journalists did nothing to help him as he defended our freedom, human rights, and civil liberties, which was not exactly surprising since he was exposing the kind of lies they get paid to tell - like about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction, about Qaddafi being on the verge of committing genocide, about Assad gassing his own people outside Damascus.

In March, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was sent packing after rather undiplomatically referring to President Trump as a "moron," soon to be replaced by Mike Pompeo, who moved over from his post as CIA director. Pompeo quickly demanded "complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization of North Korea," tactfully avoiding mention of massive and growing nuclear stockpiles in U.S. hands, as well as any reference to the fact that the U.S. scorched and blasted North Korea to a barren ruin with napalm and "conventional" bombs (over three million Koreans died in the "police action"), an achievement that would have been quite impossible if North Korea had possessed even one deliverable atomic bomb. Meanwhile, Gina Haspel shattered the glass ceiling at the CIA, replacing Pompeo as director of the agency, the first woman to fill that post. Prior to this victory for women everywhere Haspel ran the agency's torture unit. Will the feminist triumph lead to more or fewer testicles hooked up to car batteries? Stay tuned.

In April, the FBI raided the New York offices of former Trump attorney Michael Cohen. Cohen is alleged to have organized the payment of "hush money" to women Trump had affairs with, including porn star Stormy Daniels. The stunning violation of Cohen's privacy rights proved to be of no concern to liberals, who allegedly care about civil liberties. With Cohen's personal banking transactions dominating the airwaves, they affected shock that Cohen was trading on his relationship with Trump, influence peddling being such a rarity in Washington. Conservative author Ann Coulter eagerly bashed liberals over the head for their hypocritical failure to criticize the raid: "If, instead of being 'Michael Cohen, personal lawyer to Donald Trump,' he had been 'Mohammed Kahani, personal lawyer to Osama bin Laden,' liberals would be having die-ins across the country to protest the raid."

In May, Trump sent a U.S. delegation to dedicate a new American embassy in Jerusalem, the culmination of half a century of Jewish colonization of Arab land in the city, all supported with a nod and a wink by U.S. administrations going back to LBJ.  Liberals, deeply affected by the separation of children from their parents at the U.S. border later in the year, didn't even deign to notice thousands of Palestinian children bombed and shot with U.S. weapons (often modified and "improved" by Israel) while going about their daily activities in their own country.

In June, the Supreme Court upheld Trump's travel ban limiting entry to the U.S. by travelers from Libya, Syria, Somalia, Iran, Yemen, Venezuela, and North Korea. Not coincidentally, all of these countries had been seriously damaged or destroyed by U.S. imperial policies largely opposed by Republican and Democratic bases, but supported by both parties' elites. Immigration debate raged about who should be let in and who shut out, but little attention was given to the fact that those in desperate flight from Washington's brutal economic austerity and region-ravaging wars would have no motive to come in the first place if the American people were allowed to reject these unpopular policies at the ballot box. But thanks to corporate administered elections, policy is insulated from politics, and voters cast ballots based on the perceived personality differences of the candidates, not vital policy matters.

In July, President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, touching off yet another round of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Kavanaugh sailed through the nomination proceedings until polling data showed the Democratic Party was within range of re-capturing the Senate in the rapidly approaching November elections. In a flash, Democrats brought forth Palo Alto university psychology professor Christine Blasey-Ford, who accused Kavanaugh of having tried to rape her at a high school party in the 1980s. But Ford proved unable to even place herself at the scene of the alleged crime, much less Kavanaugh, and none of the four alleged witnesses she cited could remember the party in question. Her allegations were left uncorroborated, and the Senate hearings quickly degenerated into a reality TV farce about sex, beer, and fart references (allegedly) in Kavanaugh's high school yearbook. With screaming mobs of always-believe-the-woman protesters swarming over the capitol, Kavanaugh was confirmed 50-48, giving Republicans a long-sought right-wing "libertarian" majority on the court. (Note: the Kavanaugh appointment was made in July, but his confirmation hearings didn't end until October.)

In August, Arizona Senator John McCain died. The best eulogy was delivered decades prematurely by Spanish psychiatrist Fernando Barral, who evaluated McCain during his captivity in North Vietnam in the 1960s: “From the moral and ideological point of view he (McCain) showed us he is an insensitive individual without human depth, who does not show the slightest concern, who does not appear to have thought about the criminal acts he committed against a population from the absolute impunity of his airplane, and that nevertheless those people saved his life, fed him, and looked after his health and he is now healthy and strong. I believe that he has bombed densely populated places for sport. I noted that he was hardened, that he spoke of banal things as if he were at a cocktail party.” 

A rabid war-monger, McCain unaccountably won the admiration of Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who joined war criminals Barack Obama and George W. Bush in praising McCain after his death, tweeting nonsensically that he "represents an unparalleled example of human decency and American service."

In September, the New York Times published an anonymous op-ed by a "senior official in the Trump administration," who assured the American people "there are adults in the room" working closely to "frustrate parts of his (Trump's) agenda" and his "anti-democratic impulses." Nevertheless, the author confessed to seeing some "bright spots" in Trump's policies, such as:

 (1) deregulation - (rolling back regulations against air, water, and soil pollution; cutting consumer protections; weakening labor law and job safety standards; and freeing banks of burdensome regulations that prevent runaway speculation leading to economic collapse). These were good moves, according to the author.

(2) tax cuts - (overwhelmingly to benefit the rich, which produce a stock market boom that makes already grotesque poverty and income inequality even worse). 

(3) a "more robust" military - (that is, one even more glutted with the technology of mass murder that produces bitter anti-Washington hatred, often culminating in retaliatory terror attacks against Americans).  

The anonymous author also expressed alarm about Trump seeking friendly relations with Vladimir Putin, as opposed to the establishment policy of insult, demonization, and nuclear brinksmanship that carries a high risk of WWIII. 

If the foregoing are the views of "the adults in the room," maybe having a childish lunatic as president isn't so bad. On the other hand. . .

In October, the United Nations issued a dire report on climate change, warning that humanity has just 12 years left to drastically limit carbon emissions in order to avoid catastrophic consequences by the end of the century. While applying to the government of Ireland for a permit to build a huge wall to protect a golf course he owns from climate-induced rise in sea levels, Trump in the U.S. had his National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recommend an end to regulations on auto emissions on the grounds that by the end of the century (extrapolating from current trends and doing nothing to stop them) we'll have reached irretrievable environmental catastrophe anyway, so what's the point of not burning as much carbon as we want in the interim? 

In November, voters flocked to the polls in record numbers for a mid-term election which was widely seen as a referendum on Donald Trump. Turnout, while unusually high, still only reached 49%. In other words, even with the polarizing figure of Trump drawing record attention to politics, a majority of U.S. citizens did not see a vote worth casting. Though this attitude is customarily dismissed as reflecting lack of civic concern (by Democrats) or tacit satisfaction with the status quo (by Republicans), the attitude coincides with this fundamental reality:  non-voters are not a cross-section of Americans but the lower half of the wealth pyramid, which has no champion in an electoral system dominated by large corporations. In short, poor people won't vote for the politics of the rich.

In December, establishment media and politicians extravagantly praised recently deceased president George Herbert Walker Bush for decency, civility, and commitment to causes larger than himself, values deliberately cited to highlight a perceived contrast with Donald Trump, who witnessed the eulogies delivered at Bush's funeral in sullen silence. Among the causes "larger than himself" that Bush participated in was Indonesia's extermination of two hundred thousand simple mountain people in East Timor when he was CIA director (Bush gave the go-ahead), admiringly toasting Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos in Manila for an imaginary "adherence to democratic principle," when in fact he was guilty of "widespread and systematic" torture according to Amnesty International, and launching the 1991 Gulf War after refusing to consider any diplomatic resolution of the Kuwait crisis, killing two hundred thousand Iraqis (by Pentagon estimates) and leaving the bombed-out country in a "pre-industrial age" suffering "apocalyptic results" according to a UN mission. As for his "decency and civility," the best illustration of the absence of these qualities in Bush was his response to the U.S.S. Vincennes shooting down an Iranian civilian plane in 1988. The plane was in an ascending flight path and its transponder was clearly identifying it as a civilian plane when it was deliberately shot down, killing 290 people. Said Bush: "I don't care what the facts are. I'll never apologize for the United States of America." 

How decent, how civil. 

Out with the old, in with the new. If the interests of over half the population cannot be represented in the electoral system, let's face the fact that we have to produce a revolutionary democratic movement outside that system to challenge and overcome it. With extinction hanging over the human race, there's no time better than now to make it happen.

Happy New Year.


Sources: 

"The year in review," The Week - The Best of the U.S. and International Media, December 21/ December 28, 2018

John Hogan, "Noam Chomsky Calls Trump and Republican Allies 'Criminally Insane'" Scientific American, November 3, 2018 - for information on Trump and climate change

Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn, "The Horrors of John McCain: War Hero or War Criminal," Counterpunch, June 20, 2015

Gary Leupp, "Why Adulate This War-Monger?" Counterpunch, September 3, 2018

ZeroHedge.com, "Famed War Reporter Robert Fisk Reaches Syrian 'Chemical Attack' Site, Concludes "They Were Not Gassed," April 17, 2018 

Robert Fantina, "Bad to Worse:  Tillerson, Pompeo and Haspel," Counterpunch, March 16, 2018 

The Impact of the (Israel-Palestine) Conflict on Children, https://ifamericaknew.org/stat/children.html 

Jeremy R. Hammond, "The 'Forgotten' U.S. Shootdown of Iranian Airliner Flight 655," Foreign Policy Journal, July 3, 2017

Jon Halliday and Bruce Cumings, "Korea - The Unknown War," (Pantheon, 1988)

Ann Coulter, "Resistance Is Futile: How the Trump-Hating Left Lost Its Collective Mind" (Random House, 2018)- for information on Michael Cohen

Michael Parenti, "Democracy For The Few," (Thomson-Wadsworth, 2002) - for Pentagon estimate of deaths in the 1991 Gulf War

Michael K. Smith, "Portraits of Empire," (Common Courage, 2003) - for information on George Herbert Walker Bush.