Here is where Krystal Ball and I part company. First, people should watch this several minutes' oral and visual op-ed from Krystal Ball because she provides important information and context about foreign affairs that are not provided anywhere else in corporate owned media.
I think Ms. Ball is spot-on correct that revolution is currently in the air around the world. For me, and I think Ms. Ball as well, this is the foreign policy equivalent to the labor unrest in our nation that corporate owned media continually ignores other than a stray newspaper headline. It is the left part of the Great Reaction against the Neo-Liberal/Capitalist Consensus of world leaders for the past 40 plus years.
Second, I agree with Ms. Ball there can be over-coverage of the "Trump as a danger to the Republic" story, and the way in which elitist imperialist National Security State types are now convincing Trump-bootlicking Lindsey Graham that it is maybe time to stop dancing with Trump. There is a National Security State sort of reaction going on as a result of Trump's tweets yesterday. However, that fact does not change the most straightforward fact: Trump is a danger to what is left of the republic in a way that portends full-on fascism of a very virulent and racist type. When I consider the Dominionist-Christian fundamentalist zealots and right wing racists inside the US military, I wonder if there is a further danger from Trump in the next year to push a fascist military coup and how much of the US military follows him. It will not take a majority of the military to back Trump in a coup. It never does, as we know from our Founders, from revolutionists in Soviet Russia, and in Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and Japan, up through our own time. It is why I have come to the conclusion Trump must be stopped now before we reach a stage where Trump cannot be stopped when he attempts a coup for his own self-aggrandizement and the fascistic-religious zealots in the US military see an opportunity in joining him.
Ms. Ball's commentary (strangely) completely ignores how Trump's policies are largely consistent with what I am calling the Fascist International, and, after Ms. Ball delivered her commentary, we saw Trump's pronouncement yesterday to abandon the Kurds to Turkish imperial desires and how Trump's overall policy moves play into Putin's Russian policy demands. I get that my strange bedfellow position includes people like Max Boot or some other warmongering national security state (the link is to Vidal's 1998 speech to the National Press Club, starting at just before the 10 minute mark) elitists. I believe, however, that is a safer strange bedfellow than becoming a member of the anti-anti-Trump coalition, who end up sounding like an American Communist, circa 1940, when the Stalin-Hitler Pact was in vogue, and American Reds were calling FDR a Social Fascist again and calling him an imperialist warmonger.
Ms. Ball also wrongly assumes the corporate media will cover these revolutionary activities if there was nothing about Trump and Ukraine. This is a false assumption and conclusion. The vast majority of American citizens still don't understand why the US was wrong in the US war against Vietnam (the failure to understand how bad Ken Burns' documentary on Vietnam, and his obscurant discussion and misinformation regarding the 1954 Geneva Accords was, is my Exhibit A). Worse, the vast majority of American citizens still do not know, let alone understand, how the US supported, trained, and subsidized killers to lead regimes in Central America in the 1980s to kill clergy, doctors, nurses, teachers, and labor leaders.* The vast majority of Americans still do not know or understand all sorts of foreign policies the US has followed around the world. To think as she does means she should also think the corporate media will suddenly find time to report on labor unrest inside our nation, or find time to fairly report on Bernie Sanders' policies and find Sanders himself a great candidate who stands for policies the majority of American support. That will not happen. And, sorry, Ms. Ball, this is all of a single piece.
I think we are in a Gil Scott-Heron moment: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, at Home or Abroad. Worse, we are in a moment where the elite are divided, and we, who are powerless, end up having to choose which elite with whom we align. The Neo-Liberal/Capitalist/National Security State or the Fascist International. It is not a pretty choice. I continue to support Bernie Sanders' candidacy, and will see how he holds up following his heart attack. He remains the only and singular salvation as a U.S. president at this precipitous moment in U.S. history. He is my "great leap forward," with all the ironies, contradictions, hopefulness, and the Vonnegut-ian recognition that we should, above all, value kindness.
But, for me, again: Trump remains a clear and immediate danger to what remains of our Republic. We do not, and should not, wait until he acts more effectively in pushing for a coup where he truly becomes the Orange Caudillo.
I think we are in a Gil Scott-Heron moment: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, at Home or Abroad. Worse, we are in a moment where the elite are divided, and we, who are powerless, end up having to choose which elite with whom we align. The Neo-Liberal/Capitalist/National Security State or the Fascist International. It is not a pretty choice. I continue to support Bernie Sanders' candidacy, and will see how he holds up following his heart attack. He remains the only and singular salvation as a U.S. president at this precipitous moment in U.S. history. He is my "great leap forward," with all the ironies, contradictions, hopefulness, and the Vonnegut-ian recognition that we should, above all, value kindness.
But, for me, again: Trump remains a clear and immediate danger to what remains of our Republic. We do not, and should not, wait until he acts more effectively in pushing for a coup where he truly becomes the Orange Caudillo.
* Go ahead. Try to Google an article that shows how Ken Burns' Vietnam documentary did what I said regarding the 1954 Geneva Accords, and how the U.S. created out of whole cloth a government called the "South" Vietnamese government. Try to find a non-left wing source regarding what the U.S. did in Central America. The documents from the U.S. government itself tell these truths. Yet, the "mainstream" corporate owned U.S. media remains essentially silent in providing any narrative or context or any detailed information for the most part in such matters. One must consult books from reporters on the ground in Central America or in Vietnam, and even then, there are limits to understanding. One ends up in Chomsky-Zinn land and, of course, in corporate media parlance, that makes one a hopeless left-winger and possibly a left wing version of wearing a tin-foil hat. As Gore Vidal once remarked in a letter to me, the university system and the corporate media do wonders in propagating Pax Americana.
