Probably the best discourse I have ever read on the foundational moral question underlying our foreign policy. When will we recognize our profound and multitudinous sins in our dealings with the rest of the world, much less atone for them? An excellent piece. Thanks, Corbin.
Hi Corbin and Greg. What you're both saying has truth. It might be difficult for some people to approach. But there's something that might be helpful in getting more folks to sit with it.
The Clinton administration told the incoming Bush team Osama was planning on attacking the United States. They dropped the ball in protecting the United States after it was known Al Qaida attacked USS Cole the embassy in Kenya.
It's not blaming them bush and the Republicans for the attack it's blaming them for a disregard for a fundamental job we aren't interested in a near miss or recovery after a house burns down or more likely a factory we want people who took the job seriously enough a fire isn't even likely to start.
This is a different sort of culpability and it happened under Republican watch and they didn't even get Osama Bush said he didn't think about him much. A GWOT that upset our lives cost us our freedoms got Iraqis killed for what all because some asshole in a cave our nation who fought the fucking Nazis best the Soviet Union six ways to Sunday lost its shit over a guy who his family didn't want anything to do with.
And that was under Republicans who ended up ruining the world economy and that's what the republicans are doing again.
I'm not saying this to minimize your point I think it's can be an easier invitation for people more into America first to approach it note I'm not saying it only affected us it affected the whole world and bush could have been on the ball but that's a Republican failing they make those immoral acts more likely and they're justification odd bullshit and they never acknowledge the cost and the harm
You reminded me of something else Chalmers Johnson said that has always haunted me::
"The ‘defense’ budget is three quarters of a trillion dollars. Profits went up last year well over 25%. I guarantee you: when war becomes that profitable, we’re going to see more of it."
I listened to Steve Schmidt with Dean Blundell this morning (time I wish I’d spent doing anything else) Steve ought to read this and take a real reflection of his opinions.
Piker's has apologized for that one quote from seven years ago, and his explanation is not so different than what Trent says here - from a Young Turks episode:
Uygur: So you said America deserved 9/11. Did you mean that?
Piker: No. Obviously not. Especially considering the fact that ... well ... that is a very viral quote that is going around currently. If those people were at least even remotely charitable or cared about the actual truth of what I was talking about they would understand that within context, I was simply referencing the fact that all of the foreign policy decisions, and our arming of insurgent groups in the region, and our efforts in destabilizing the Middle East have a direct consequence — a boomerang effect rather, if you will — in in causing 9/11. Of course, every part of what I advocate for is against violence. I abhor violence. I think it's awful.
Piker is just doing what liberals do; caving under pressure and ignoring principle. His answer to Cenk’s question should have been ‘yes’, if not ‘absolutely’. Then he could have followed with context if he desired, framed using the term blowback.
America deserved 9/11 just like America deserves Trump; the empire is rotten to its core, and until enough of our citizens reckon with that uncomfortable truth, any attempt at ‘pragmatic reform’ will fail.
You cannot end a genocide by voting for its enablers. Ever. No amount of lesser evil rationalization excuses that stupidity. When Little Bill is lying on the floor in Unforgiven, looking at Muny and the rifle pointed at his face, he utters the words ‘I don’t deserve this’.
After seeing the evil Bill has committed prior to this moment, most viewers are thinking, ‘Yeah Bill, you kinda do deserve it’.
Ultimately, Muny defines the blowback: ‘Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.’
No, I think the explanation of the context makes a big difference. All the difference, especially for someone not used to the role of a politician, who should be aware that anything he says can and will be used out of context against him.
That’s why politicians are despised so much; their fear of out of context retaliation results in nothing but canned responses and vacuous bromide, as well as the repeated refusal to answer yes/no questions. Instead of speaking truth and directly addressing attempts to decontextualize, they fall back to coward mode.
I don’t have a problem with Piker providing context; I take his issue with his one word response prior to the accompanying context.
Imo, I think Piker believed America deserved 9/11 when he made the initial tweet, and I think he believes it now. Not that those who died deserved it, but America writ large.
Thinking about your comment a little more, I'd like to take the opportunity to address a wider, more important subject.
We don't have to settle for shitty, biased news media who fan the flames of division for profit and the ulterior motives of media barons. We are at a particular point in history where the people at the top are less and less able to keep a lid on it. There are, and I think will be an increasing number of democratically-aligned media such as Substack where information can flow up as well as down, which has great potential for spreading information outward infinitely, until the same truth is more or less understood everywhere.
Because there is only one truth. There are undoubtedly people who dwell in ignorance and think they're alone in their understanding. More commonly, however, there are people who promote what they know are lies. Cause it makes money or gives them some other advantage.
Substack is a wonderful tool for promoting understanding, but to make the world better, everyone, to their ability, should rise above passivity and make their time here on Substack part of an active campaign to rid the world of bullshit in media, and bullshitting news purveyors.
Organize.
It *can* be done. It may seem daunting, but let me tell you about the 2-3 years I spent helping to end pot prohibition.
When I quit my newspaper job in 1995, public support for "legalizing" marijuana was at 24%.
In less than two years we had passed Prop 215 in California, legalizing medical marijuana. I could tell then that our goal - to stop people from being thrown in jail for pot - was unstoppable. Our goal was soon reached in a critical mass of states. [*]
The reasons for our success are, or should be, directly parallel to why and how we won. (I don't think of it as "legalizing pot." I think of it as "stopping them from throwing people in jail for pot.")
That's the first thing. You need to agree on your mission, because if you pick the right one, you will find that every action you take, every word you write or speak, gets you further. That's why I think people should organize to take on lying media. You could have a subset that focuses on all the evil that Israel does, for example, but when you succeed and the Zionist entity is just a bad memory, you will still have lying media promoting every bad thing in the world.
And that's the next thing. I have learned that people, for the most part, want to know the truth, and they will generally act on it, unless they make a living from lies. There is absolutely no good reason for pot to be illegal, for example, for the exact same reasons alcohol prohibition was wrong. Anything based on lies is a house of cards. Your only real opposition is the people who make a living off of lies. It used to be hard to fight their lies when they controlled all the media. But that will never happen again, so what are you waiting for?
There's more to it, like keep your ego out of it. But any reasonably competent person can take part, or even start organizing.
One of the most important principles to remember is that you're waging a public relations campaign. Don't threaten or denigrate. Don't swear or do anything to alienate anyone. Frame things positively, use questions instead of commandments; make decisions after consultation, never unilaterally; and do no harm.
I'm afraid I'm in danger of straying from my subject. I've gotta end it here. If I've left something out, I'll check back and go from there.
[*] I don't know why the march of progress seems to have stopped. If anyone from a state still under prohibition would like to contact me for direction, please do.
If we were talking about U.S. interactions with certain parties, for example, U.S. support for jihadies against the Soviets in the 1980s, just about anyone in fairness might say the U.S. deserved 9/11. Context is everything.
No, context is important. It is not everything, because it can be skewed by all sorts of bias and fallacy. Plenty of people will buttress the argument on whether the Russian invasion of Ukraine was provoked or not with ‘context’.
Well, ok, you're right. I was thinking "Context is everything" the way you would say it out loud. Reality is everything. How you use context to get there is what's important. Does that make more sense?
I agree with this so much. I'll go even farther: Our leaders welcome blowback. They fucking love it! Because it gives them an easy pretext for suppressing freedom at home. I think they consider American lives very small price to pay for their aims. Truly, these American leaders (going back many administrations) are the ones that hate freedom. They hate it when it comes to respecting the sovereignty of other nations, and they hate it when it comes to the American people having a say about what they're doing. It's good news to them when a 9/11 happens and they can convert the trauma to a mandate for open war with Congress right behind them and in such a moment can even pass anti-freedom legislation that persists indefinitely.
Blowback (or the propagandistic term "terrorism") is the small kid punching the big bully. Of course the loss of American lives in 9/11 was horrific. We can multiply that loss exponentially to get a sense of what our government has been doing in countries around the world in wars of greed.
The thing I wish most for America is an honest reckoning. It seems necessary for a resilient transformation. I so appreciate you, Corbin, for being a thought leader on this front.
Major oil companies reap massive profits as US and Iran fighting drives energy prices higher
NEW YORK (AP) — American oil and gas giants raked in massive spring profits while fighting between Iran and the U.S. impeded petroleum shipments and consumers around the world paid more for fuel and confronted shortages.
...
U.S. oil and gas giants Exxon Mobil and Chevron more than doubled their profits in the second quarter as fighting between Iran and the U.S. impeded petroleum shipments.
Someone I love just managed to make it down some 100 stories and escape the World Trade Center before it collapsed. Neither she nor I voted for anyone who attacked Iran or any Arabian nation. Give me a break. I take no responsibility for the actions of the evil fools elected by my countrymen.
So maybe we all need to make more of an effort to prevent the next batch of evil fools from continuing this charade of only continuing the profitable policy of war. And it obviously pertains to both parties equally.
The most useful question to ask regarding 9/11 is , who benefited?
Answer: the neocons and their government allies like the CIA, because the event provided the perfect excuse for the war they wanted. Also, Israel. Netanyahu said the attacks were good for Israel.
Serious investigators would have looked for any facts to support the theory that they were involved in whatever it was that really happened or didn't that day.
Just started following you Corbin. You have a good head on your shoulders and are on the right (correct) side of the arguments we must have to continue the wake up call.
It is called hegemony. Bullying with a payout. Gangster capitalism leading to disaster capitalism. The end game is to profit, to acquire, to own, to control. To carry out a decision to destroy persons, innocent biota, foul the air, the water, the soil, crush untold years of societal development in a few days or weeks, the aggressor has to function with malice aforethought -- Killing and destruction is desired because it allows sadism and perversion to thrive. This is the paternal twin of of hegemony, most probably the driver of it. Feelings only matter when accompanied by actions -- one feels hungry for power, money, property, resources, so, one uses Acts of Aggression to acquire the dopamine high, the nor-epinephrine high of succeeding with that aggression. Dominance leads to constant manipulation, just as the first Lie requires repeated lies, often growing exponentially until Every Act is a Lie. If we look closely at 'murkan business/societal/political/LE-military behaviors across time, it is crystal clear that 'murka is an aggressor nation that never believed it own founding philosophy. Those documents were nothing more than cynicism perpetrated on the fledgling citizens, in their name, and once taxation became the law of the land, the citizenry paid for all of it, time and time again. As usual, Corbin says the quiet part out loud. Now we blame govt. for this. Correct. But who/what controls govt.? NOT the citizenry at large. The corporation of 'murka and its private corporate oligarchies control govt. We all know this, we have seen it for two centuries and counting. We even allowed the Extreme Sport of Injustice, the SCOTUS, to copulate, grow and birth the corporation as an individual citizen, a person of standing. And yet the oligarchy labels us whiners, malcontents, terrorists for having a thought that does not worship The Company Store. Hmmmm. . .
You don't really answer your own question, and that is the appropriate answer. It is a silly question, designed to set off arguments about morality instead of corruption and genocide, which is exactly why it is being asked by Israelis and their treasonous American backers.
It was both clever and appropriate for el-Sayed to ask why American money is being spent on Israel AT ALL instead of at home, and for him to keep asking it. The Zionists have no viable answer because there is none.
I was appalled at our response to 9/11. A good friend, who was in the Marines as a Lieutenant, was in charge of reserve troops who had to 'clean up' desert storm. He completely lost his mind over what he experienced. He told me that they were using bulldozers to put dead bodies of civilians, that had dead flies on them, in mass graves. He never got over it. He was 3rd generation marine. The cognitive dissonance destroyed him slowly over the years. The victims of 9/11 went far beyond those who were murdered when the twin towers fell. He had a visceral experience of the US being the monsters destroying innocent people's lives with impunity.
I remember that all relatives of the Saudi princes were given safe passage home, on private jets, while our airspace was still closed. Gosh, maybe someone knew exactly who was responsible, maybe even before it happened. The Bushes were very cozy with the Saudis.
Now there are implications that mossad provided intelligence. Perhaps that's an unfounded conspiracy theory but at this point I'd believe almost anything about zionist insanity.
One of my best friends, who was married to that marine, is Jewish. She has been severely depressed and having nightmares about the genocide in Gaza. She did the usual Jewish experience as a teen. A month in a kibbutz, a bat mitzva, so she feels responsible or somehow implicated in all the death and destruction. She couldn't sleep for months when the bombing started. I have reassured her that she's no more responsible for what zionists are doing than I am for what dump is doing. Calling out zionist genocide has nothing to do with Judaism, anymore that 9/11 had anything to do with Islam. What IS antisemitic is to conflate Judaism with zionism.
We are NOT the scrappy rebels fighting for the rights of all, we ARE the storm troopers deploying the death star on innocent civilians. maga's nostalgia about returning to how things were is historically accurate. This nation was founded on genocide, slavery and a swarm of locusts who moved across the country destroying the land along the way to support the railroad barons. This country was opened up to immigrants for selfish reasons, not altruistic ones. maga has made it clear that is what they want to return to.
This history doesn't make the US bad, most nations have a brutal foundation story, but let's not pretend we're any better than anyone else and let's start to try to live up to all the ideals that we love to pontificate about.
There are no 'good old days' that actually guaranteed liberty and justice for all. But that doesn't mean we can't do our best to move in that direction. In some ways maga has been a useful wake up call about the absolute monsters we are. At least some of the graft and abuse is out in the open now.
Corbin, your analysis is right on the mark. If we learnt to mind our business and improve the conditions of the poor at home, we will not engage in these destructive policies and wars abroad. It is high time we did this. FDR taught us that unless we have to Save the World from leaders like Hitler and the Japanese warlords, we should not get into unnecessary wars. Instead, we should follow FDR's example of expanding the social safety net for the citizens.
Probably the best discourse I have ever read on the foundational moral question underlying our foreign policy. When will we recognize our profound and multitudinous sins in our dealings with the rest of the world, much less atone for them? An excellent piece. Thanks, Corbin.
This country has been an arrogant bully for a long, long time. Talk about entitlement! We have always had the same policy: "Gimmee, it's mine!"
Hi Corbin and Greg. What you're both saying has truth. It might be difficult for some people to approach. But there's something that might be helpful in getting more folks to sit with it.
The Clinton administration told the incoming Bush team Osama was planning on attacking the United States. They dropped the ball in protecting the United States after it was known Al Qaida attacked USS Cole the embassy in Kenya.
It's not blaming them bush and the Republicans for the attack it's blaming them for a disregard for a fundamental job we aren't interested in a near miss or recovery after a house burns down or more likely a factory we want people who took the job seriously enough a fire isn't even likely to start.
This is a different sort of culpability and it happened under Republican watch and they didn't even get Osama Bush said he didn't think about him much. A GWOT that upset our lives cost us our freedoms got Iraqis killed for what all because some asshole in a cave our nation who fought the fucking Nazis best the Soviet Union six ways to Sunday lost its shit over a guy who his family didn't want anything to do with.
And that was under Republicans who ended up ruining the world economy and that's what the republicans are doing again.
I'm not saying this to minimize your point I think it's can be an easier invitation for people more into America first to approach it note I'm not saying it only affected us it affected the whole world and bush could have been on the ball but that's a Republican failing they make those immoral acts more likely and they're justification odd bullshit and they never acknowledge the cost and the harm
You reminded me of something else Chalmers Johnson said that has always haunted me::
"The ‘defense’ budget is three quarters of a trillion dollars. Profits went up last year well over 25%. I guarantee you: when war becomes that profitable, we’re going to see more of it."
And what's obvious to each of us is if nations turned their 'defense budgets' into global 'plowshares' there would be no need for wars.
But but but Craig! Then who's going to ensure the Right People™️ get to make all the money?! Won't someone think of the wealthy shareholders...
;)
I listened to Steve Schmidt with Dean Blundell this morning (time I wish I’d spent doing anything else) Steve ought to read this and take a real reflection of his opinions.
I don't know who either of those people are... aaaaand it sounds like I'm better off for it.
Piker's has apologized for that one quote from seven years ago, and his explanation is not so different than what Trent says here - from a Young Turks episode:
Uygur: So you said America deserved 9/11. Did you mean that?
Piker: No. Obviously not. Especially considering the fact that ... well ... that is a very viral quote that is going around currently. If those people were at least even remotely charitable or cared about the actual truth of what I was talking about they would understand that within context, I was simply referencing the fact that all of the foreign policy decisions, and our arming of insurgent groups in the region, and our efforts in destabilizing the Middle East have a direct consequence — a boomerang effect rather, if you will — in in causing 9/11. Of course, every part of what I advocate for is against violence. I abhor violence. I think it's awful.
Piker is just doing what liberals do; caving under pressure and ignoring principle. His answer to Cenk’s question should have been ‘yes’, if not ‘absolutely’. Then he could have followed with context if he desired, framed using the term blowback.
America deserved 9/11 just like America deserves Trump; the empire is rotten to its core, and until enough of our citizens reckon with that uncomfortable truth, any attempt at ‘pragmatic reform’ will fail.
You cannot end a genocide by voting for its enablers. Ever. No amount of lesser evil rationalization excuses that stupidity. When Little Bill is lying on the floor in Unforgiven, looking at Muny and the rifle pointed at his face, he utters the words ‘I don’t deserve this’.
After seeing the evil Bill has committed prior to this moment, most viewers are thinking, ‘Yeah Bill, you kinda do deserve it’.
Ultimately, Muny defines the blowback: ‘Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.’
I'm surprised Piker's animal abuse doesn't get brought up more often. Much harder for him to dodge.
No, I think the explanation of the context makes a big difference. All the difference, especially for someone not used to the role of a politician, who should be aware that anything he says can and will be used out of context against him.
That’s why politicians are despised so much; their fear of out of context retaliation results in nothing but canned responses and vacuous bromide, as well as the repeated refusal to answer yes/no questions. Instead of speaking truth and directly addressing attempts to decontextualize, they fall back to coward mode.
I don’t have a problem with Piker providing context; I take his issue with his one word response prior to the accompanying context.
Imo, I think Piker believed America deserved 9/11 when he made the initial tweet, and I think he believes it now. Not that those who died deserved it, but America writ large.
Thinking about your comment a little more, I'd like to take the opportunity to address a wider, more important subject.
We don't have to settle for shitty, biased news media who fan the flames of division for profit and the ulterior motives of media barons. We are at a particular point in history where the people at the top are less and less able to keep a lid on it. There are, and I think will be an increasing number of democratically-aligned media such as Substack where information can flow up as well as down, which has great potential for spreading information outward infinitely, until the same truth is more or less understood everywhere.
Because there is only one truth. There are undoubtedly people who dwell in ignorance and think they're alone in their understanding. More commonly, however, there are people who promote what they know are lies. Cause it makes money or gives them some other advantage.
Substack is a wonderful tool for promoting understanding, but to make the world better, everyone, to their ability, should rise above passivity and make their time here on Substack part of an active campaign to rid the world of bullshit in media, and bullshitting news purveyors.
Organize.
It *can* be done. It may seem daunting, but let me tell you about the 2-3 years I spent helping to end pot prohibition.
When I quit my newspaper job in 1995, public support for "legalizing" marijuana was at 24%.
In less than two years we had passed Prop 215 in California, legalizing medical marijuana. I could tell then that our goal - to stop people from being thrown in jail for pot - was unstoppable. Our goal was soon reached in a critical mass of states. [*]
The reasons for our success are, or should be, directly parallel to why and how we won. (I don't think of it as "legalizing pot." I think of it as "stopping them from throwing people in jail for pot.")
That's the first thing. You need to agree on your mission, because if you pick the right one, you will find that every action you take, every word you write or speak, gets you further. That's why I think people should organize to take on lying media. You could have a subset that focuses on all the evil that Israel does, for example, but when you succeed and the Zionist entity is just a bad memory, you will still have lying media promoting every bad thing in the world.
And that's the next thing. I have learned that people, for the most part, want to know the truth, and they will generally act on it, unless they make a living from lies. There is absolutely no good reason for pot to be illegal, for example, for the exact same reasons alcohol prohibition was wrong. Anything based on lies is a house of cards. Your only real opposition is the people who make a living off of lies. It used to be hard to fight their lies when they controlled all the media. But that will never happen again, so what are you waiting for?
There's more to it, like keep your ego out of it. But any reasonably competent person can take part, or even start organizing.
One of the most important principles to remember is that you're waging a public relations campaign. Don't threaten or denigrate. Don't swear or do anything to alienate anyone. Frame things positively, use questions instead of commandments; make decisions after consultation, never unilaterally; and do no harm.
I'm afraid I'm in danger of straying from my subject. I've gotta end it here. If I've left something out, I'll check back and go from there.
[*] I don't know why the march of progress seems to have stopped. If anyone from a state still under prohibition would like to contact me for direction, please do.
If we were talking about U.S. interactions with certain parties, for example, U.S. support for jihadies against the Soviets in the 1980s, just about anyone in fairness might say the U.S. deserved 9/11. Context is everything.
No, context is important. It is not everything, because it can be skewed by all sorts of bias and fallacy. Plenty of people will buttress the argument on whether the Russian invasion of Ukraine was provoked or not with ‘context’.
Well, ok, you're right. I was thinking "Context is everything" the way you would say it out loud. Reality is everything. How you use context to get there is what's important. Does that make more sense?
I agree with this so much. I'll go even farther: Our leaders welcome blowback. They fucking love it! Because it gives them an easy pretext for suppressing freedom at home. I think they consider American lives very small price to pay for their aims. Truly, these American leaders (going back many administrations) are the ones that hate freedom. They hate it when it comes to respecting the sovereignty of other nations, and they hate it when it comes to the American people having a say about what they're doing. It's good news to them when a 9/11 happens and they can convert the trauma to a mandate for open war with Congress right behind them and in such a moment can even pass anti-freedom legislation that persists indefinitely.
Blowback (or the propagandistic term "terrorism") is the small kid punching the big bully. Of course the loss of American lives in 9/11 was horrific. We can multiply that loss exponentially to get a sense of what our government has been doing in countries around the world in wars of greed.
The thing I wish most for America is an honest reckoning. It seems necessary for a resilient transformation. I so appreciate you, Corbin, for being a thought leader on this front.
Some leaders.
No one deserves a thing like that but the US sowed the seeds of it by treating the developing world as their personal playground.
The rich and powerful did this: not me or my family, none of whom voted for the evil fools who put our country in this trouble.
'Splains a lot:
Major oil companies reap massive profits as US and Iran fighting drives energy prices higher
NEW YORK (AP) — American oil and gas giants raked in massive spring profits while fighting between Iran and the U.S. impeded petroleum shipments and consumers around the world paid more for fuel and confronted shortages.
...
U.S. oil and gas giants Exxon Mobil and Chevron more than doubled their profits in the second quarter as fighting between Iran and the U.S. impeded petroleum shipments.
https://apnews.com/article/oil-companies-profits-exxon-chevron-9375fbf8f6f40426f7428e07d54000c7
Someone I love just managed to make it down some 100 stories and escape the World Trade Center before it collapsed. Neither she nor I voted for anyone who attacked Iran or any Arabian nation. Give me a break. I take no responsibility for the actions of the evil fools elected by my countrymen.
So maybe we all need to make more of an effort to prevent the next batch of evil fools from continuing this charade of only continuing the profitable policy of war. And it obviously pertains to both parties equally.
One of the most important things written, period, this year. The truth hurts, and the truth opens new possibilities. Thank you Corbin.
The most useful question to ask regarding 9/11 is , who benefited?
Answer: the neocons and their government allies like the CIA, because the event provided the perfect excuse for the war they wanted. Also, Israel. Netanyahu said the attacks were good for Israel.
Serious investigators would have looked for any facts to support the theory that they were involved in whatever it was that really happened or didn't that day.
Just started following you Corbin. You have a good head on your shoulders and are on the right (correct) side of the arguments we must have to continue the wake up call.
It is called hegemony. Bullying with a payout. Gangster capitalism leading to disaster capitalism. The end game is to profit, to acquire, to own, to control. To carry out a decision to destroy persons, innocent biota, foul the air, the water, the soil, crush untold years of societal development in a few days or weeks, the aggressor has to function with malice aforethought -- Killing and destruction is desired because it allows sadism and perversion to thrive. This is the paternal twin of of hegemony, most probably the driver of it. Feelings only matter when accompanied by actions -- one feels hungry for power, money, property, resources, so, one uses Acts of Aggression to acquire the dopamine high, the nor-epinephrine high of succeeding with that aggression. Dominance leads to constant manipulation, just as the first Lie requires repeated lies, often growing exponentially until Every Act is a Lie. If we look closely at 'murkan business/societal/political/LE-military behaviors across time, it is crystal clear that 'murka is an aggressor nation that never believed it own founding philosophy. Those documents were nothing more than cynicism perpetrated on the fledgling citizens, in their name, and once taxation became the law of the land, the citizenry paid for all of it, time and time again. As usual, Corbin says the quiet part out loud. Now we blame govt. for this. Correct. But who/what controls govt.? NOT the citizenry at large. The corporation of 'murka and its private corporate oligarchies control govt. We all know this, we have seen it for two centuries and counting. We even allowed the Extreme Sport of Injustice, the SCOTUS, to copulate, grow and birth the corporation as an individual citizen, a person of standing. And yet the oligarchy labels us whiners, malcontents, terrorists for having a thought that does not worship The Company Store. Hmmmm. . .
Thank you Corbin, excellent essay.
You don't really answer your own question, and that is the appropriate answer. It is a silly question, designed to set off arguments about morality instead of corruption and genocide, which is exactly why it is being asked by Israelis and their treasonous American backers.
It was both clever and appropriate for el-Sayed to ask why American money is being spent on Israel AT ALL instead of at home, and for him to keep asking it. The Zionists have no viable answer because there is none.
I do hope you are well protected by security, Corbin Trent! Trump's goons may be after you
for writing this. I think those of us who are fans are concerned for your safety. After all, you
have dared to "call a spade a spade," and that is not allowed in our anti-islam sad little
country.
I was appalled at our response to 9/11. A good friend, who was in the Marines as a Lieutenant, was in charge of reserve troops who had to 'clean up' desert storm. He completely lost his mind over what he experienced. He told me that they were using bulldozers to put dead bodies of civilians, that had dead flies on them, in mass graves. He never got over it. He was 3rd generation marine. The cognitive dissonance destroyed him slowly over the years. The victims of 9/11 went far beyond those who were murdered when the twin towers fell. He had a visceral experience of the US being the monsters destroying innocent people's lives with impunity.
I remember that all relatives of the Saudi princes were given safe passage home, on private jets, while our airspace was still closed. Gosh, maybe someone knew exactly who was responsible, maybe even before it happened. The Bushes were very cozy with the Saudis.
Now there are implications that mossad provided intelligence. Perhaps that's an unfounded conspiracy theory but at this point I'd believe almost anything about zionist insanity.
One of my best friends, who was married to that marine, is Jewish. She has been severely depressed and having nightmares about the genocide in Gaza. She did the usual Jewish experience as a teen. A month in a kibbutz, a bat mitzva, so she feels responsible or somehow implicated in all the death and destruction. She couldn't sleep for months when the bombing started. I have reassured her that she's no more responsible for what zionists are doing than I am for what dump is doing. Calling out zionist genocide has nothing to do with Judaism, anymore that 9/11 had anything to do with Islam. What IS antisemitic is to conflate Judaism with zionism.
We are NOT the scrappy rebels fighting for the rights of all, we ARE the storm troopers deploying the death star on innocent civilians. maga's nostalgia about returning to how things were is historically accurate. This nation was founded on genocide, slavery and a swarm of locusts who moved across the country destroying the land along the way to support the railroad barons. This country was opened up to immigrants for selfish reasons, not altruistic ones. maga has made it clear that is what they want to return to.
This history doesn't make the US bad, most nations have a brutal foundation story, but let's not pretend we're any better than anyone else and let's start to try to live up to all the ideals that we love to pontificate about.
There are no 'good old days' that actually guaranteed liberty and justice for all. But that doesn't mean we can't do our best to move in that direction. In some ways maga has been a useful wake up call about the absolute monsters we are. At least some of the graft and abuse is out in the open now.
Corbin, your analysis is right on the mark. If we learnt to mind our business and improve the conditions of the poor at home, we will not engage in these destructive policies and wars abroad. It is high time we did this. FDR taught us that unless we have to Save the World from leaders like Hitler and the Japanese warlords, we should not get into unnecessary wars. Instead, we should follow FDR's example of expanding the social safety net for the citizens.