Trump the Merchant of Death

Trump's plan to sell $110 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia is going to cause more war and instability in a region that is already in chaos. Foreign policy experts of all persuasions think it is a bad idea. Trump, however, has a weak mind and a shaky temperament, and he can be easily manipulated by those who know how to push his buttons. That is why Vladimir Putin is leading him by the nose and he doesn't even know it.

The Perverts at Fox News

Bill O'Reilly has "gone on vacation" because he apparently needs some rest. It turns out that Fox News has paid five women a total of $13,000,000 dollars to settle sexual harassment claims against old Blotchy Bill. As of this writing some 11 companies have pulled their ads from the O'Reilly Factor. Roger Ailes, the former CEO of Fox News, continues to face more charges. This time it's from Julie Roginsky, a contributor to Fox News, is suing Ailes for sexual harassment.

It seems that the top management at Fox are bunch of aging creeps who think they are the "Mad Men."

We Can Stop Taking "The Atlantic" Seriously

The latest issue of "The Atlantic" contains an article by Jonathan Rauch tiled "How American Politics Went Insane." It is a strange article, not particularly clear, and based on dubious conclusions, notably how Rauch equates Bernie Sanders with Donald Trump. Rauch's point seems to be that American politics is suffering from too much democracy, and that we should go back to time when political bosses and "fixers" made things run more smoothly. If Rauch were as erudite as he thinks he is, he should know that political bossism actually produced a corrupt and unresponsive political system that made a mockery of democracy.

The reality is that American democracy has become a mere façade. The GOP continues to rule Congress without challenge. The Democrats have ceased to exist as a political party and have become a "franchise" of the Clinton clan. That is how the Clintons were able to quash the Bernie Sanders campaign. The cynical strategy of HRC is to win just by being the "lesser evil." The problem isn't too much democracy, but that the voters will be presented with a "choice" that isn't really a choice.

Britain Chooses the Ocean

There's a saying attributed to Charles De Gaulle "If the British ever have to choose between Europe and the Ocean they will always choose the Ocean." I haven't been able to verify if De Gaulle actually said, but regardless I think it explains why they majority of British voters choose to leave the European Union. Personally I hate the term "Brexit" because it sounds like corporate media Newspeak. But I think the vote to leave the EU is biggest news this year, even bigger that who wins the US presidential election, because it will decide the future of Europe and much of the world as well. It's too soon to tell what the consequences will be, but it's clear that the supposedly "inevitable" move toward European integration is in trouble.

Many progressive minded people, on both sides of the Atlantic, seem to lament the vote. It's important to distinguish between the "idea" of European unity and the reality that the EU has become an undemocratic, bureaucratic monster. It may not be totalitarian like the Soviet Union, but it has become the despotism of German Chancellor and her loathsome Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble. If the British people decide that they don't want to be bossed around by Merkel and Schauble, who can blame them?

Omar Mateen--An American Not a Muslim

The recent shooting in Orlando Florida by Omar Mateen has brought out the usual shrieks from the Islamophobes. It happened just a few days after the killing of singer Christina Grimme by a lunatic who then committed suicide. What's the connection? That this country has an epidemic of maniacal killers with ready access to guns and ammunition. The Lone Shooter has become an "American Type," almost the symbol of this deranged country. It has become a tradition dating back to Lee Harvey Oswald and Charles Whitman, the original campus shooter (UT Austin 8/1/1966). These incidents have become so common that it only becomes "national" when the victim is a celebrity or the body count goes into double digits.

Much like the original "Night of the Living Dead," we are experiencing an epidemic of mass murder, committed not by zombies but by maniacs with access to guns and ammunition. The US will be the first major polity in history that will succumb not to outside invasion or meaningful political struggle, but to uncontrolled random violence with no intelligible motive.

The End of the Modern World

Those of us who remember back to the 1960's remember how people used to talk about "the modern world." Sometimes it was also called "modernity,' it was supposed to be a kind of "upward curve" of increasing prosperity and progress. The science fiction of the time, such as "2001: A Space Oddity" foretold a future where humanity would soon be travelling to the far reaches of the universe.

The ensuing half century have turned out to be more of a downward curve. Economic conditions are declining all over the world. Even in the First World standards of living are falling. This is causing growing levels of social and political breakdown. Increasing violence is making democracy unviable, leaving the only alternatives of anarchy or dictatorship. The whole idea of modernity is collapsing, and people all over the world are giving up on the future. We may scoff at those Islamists who are trying to return to a mythical caliphate. But in Europe and the US, the growth of racism and xenophobia indicates a desire to return to an imagined past. Modernism, with its glowing promises, has been discredited.

!#*% The Draft!

I'm showing my age but those of us who are old enough to remember what happed when this country had The Draft(conscription.) It seemed like a dead issue but the growing use of women in combat in the US armed forces has led to calls for women to register with the selective service. We've had the current system of registration without induction since 1980 when Jimmy Carter was trying to send a foreign policy signal. Some people think that if Carter had been re-elected in 1980 he would have proposed bringing back the Draft. It would have been a tough sell, less than a decade after the end of the old Draft, with its inequalities.

The Pentagon brass doesn't want the draft. It seems that they believe that most future wars will be of the "brushfire" variety, to which conscript armies aren't suited. During the past decade, there were people who had enlisted in the National Guard to finance their education, and then found themselves being "inducted" against their will. Multiply that by a million and that will give you an idea of what the Draft would be like.

The best thing would be to simply end registration and stop all this nonsense before any more people are killed or injured.