The US Shifts From Progressive to Authoritarian Neoliberalism

Catherine Rottenberg

February 7, 2025

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

“Shock and Awe,” “Fear and Chaos,” “Carnage”—these are just some of the more typical ways mainstream media have described the mood after Donald Trump’s first few weeks in office. From the latest announcements about removing Palestinians from Gaza and the draconian crackdown on immigrants through pulling the US out of the World Health Organization and freezing USAID and tariffs on trading partners, to declaring that the United States recognizes male and female as the only two genders, these executive orders and declaration impact a dizzying array of seemingly disparate issues.

What is clear is that we are witnessing a notable shift in relations of power in the US: from an era in which “progressive” neoliberalism characterized by deregulation, privatization, and financialized capitalism merged with progressive social agendas, such as diversity, equality and inclusion policies to an authoritarian and even fascist iteration of neoliberalism. This new formation deepens neoliberal policies but simultaneously replaces any progressive veneer with policies that single out and oppress marginalized groups. It also reverses any attempt to prevent climate breakdown, concentrating power in the hands of the executive and a few billionaire elites.

How did we get here?

Commentators have rightly pointed to the failures of the Democratic Party, which for decades has become ever more beholden to big money, abandoning not just the poor and working class along the way but increasingly sections of the middle-class.  For many voters, moreover, the Biden Administration’s complicity in and support for the genocide in Gaza crystallized the moral bankruptcy of the Democratic Party, leading to the uncommitted movement, and millions of voters simply staying home on election day.

There is also no doubt that Trump’s return to the Oval Office is about his success in weaponizing the visceral fear, anxiety, anger and resentment of ever-growing groups who feel abandoned by the state and have been increasingly living in precarity. Trump’s victory is due to his ability to frame these people’s grievances as if they overlap with the interests of world’s wealthiest people—the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

The common enemy, voters were told again and again, is the deep state, the swamp in DC and the entire corrupt political system. But while this rhetoric appealed to different groups, it also helped to obscure Trump’s real objectives: to further shrink the state through more deregulation, privatization, and decreasing taxes paid by the wealthy, while providing corporate welfare to all his big donors. Musk might have donated $200 million to the MAGA campaign, but Trump will now ensure that taxpayers’ money will be channelled back to Musk’s coffers multiplying his initial investment several fold. This accounts for Trump’s move to reassert aggressive neoliberal policies, such as rescinding restrictions on oil drilling in Alaska.

Yet, how do we account for millions of voters’ sharp rightward and indeed regressive turn on social issues, a shift that is exemplified by big tech’s current alignment with Trump? After all, Silicon Valley had been at the forefront of “progressive” neoliberalism—particularly on issues relating to gender equality and DEI initiatives.  Just think of the former COO of Facebook Sheryl Sandberg’s 2013 feminist manifesto Lean In, which was a harbinger of a neoliberal feminism, encouraging women to lean in to their careers rather than opt-out of paid employment.

To further cement the bond among his disparate supporters, Trump and MAGA Republicans successfully untethered as well as fomented two powerful historical forces, white supremacy and misogyny. These have always been part of the US’ s cultural fabric but have been attenuated and curtailed by progressive movements and legislation over the past fifty years.

White supremacy and misogyny have helped to further solder the somewhat tenuous bond between the precarious, those who feel abandoned, and the obscenely wealthy. The strategy, in other words, has been to displace and redirect anger and anxiety toward age-old easy scapegoats: immigrants, black and brown people, queer and trans folk, and unruly women and their bodies.

These various strategies have worked extremely well. Trump and his supporters have attacked critical race studies and DEI and replaced them with discourses that have always served authoritarian and fascist governments, such as ethnic nationalism and gender traditionalism.  To be sure, this trend is not new and did not begin with Trump, but these processes have now been given unbridled license under his leadership.

The attack on progressive forces can be seen, for instance, in the mainstreaming of a network of women who call themselves traditional housewives, or “tradwives” for short. Posting on social media, these women present themselves as having been liberated from the corporate rat race. They actively promote a lifestyle that takes pleasure in traditional domestic duties, feminine submissiveness, and wifehood.

The tradwife phenomenon was peripheral just a few years ago. Today, it boasts an array of influencers who have garnered significant media attention. Mainstream media outlets now cover their stories, highlighting these women’s embrace of gender traditionalism and their declarations of liberation from the straightjacket of neoliberal feminism’s ideal of a happy work-family balance.

The horrific irony is that gender traditionalism and ethnic nationalism are coming to stand in for freedom. Tradwives insist on “the joy and freedom that comes from submitting to their husbands” and see themselves as symbolising the ability to throw off the shackles of state regulation and societal restrictions.

It is precisely this convergence of forces—the Democratic Party’s moral and political bankruptcy, the entrenchment of neoliberal capitalism and financialisation, the rise of big tech’s influence, and the resurgence and strategic mobilisation of misogynist and ethnic-nationalist rhetoric—that has propelled this shift to an authoritarian-fascist iteration of neoliberalism.

Where do we go from here?

One key lesson from the 2024 elections is that for many US voters—even those who are not die-hard MAGA supporters—upending the unbearable status quo has become paramount, trumping whatever concerns some may have about the unabashed racism and misogyny of the MAGA movement. Many are likely gleeful at the wrecking ball strategy of Trump’s first days in power.

Going forward, the left will have to address people’s desire to destroy the status quo, but also their yearning for a different form of governance, one not created in the image of the corporation.

Another important lesson involves the centrality of tapping into people’s emotions. Addressing the material conditions that have produced precarity and mass grievance may well not be enough. The left will also need to untangle voters’ affective attachments and what they signify so that they can cultivate these powerful forces and reorient them.

Only by learning hard lessons—and before it is too late–will a progressive left bloc be able to regroup and convince US voters to join them in their struggle for a more just and sustainable future.

Catherine Rottenberg, a professor at Goldsmiths, University of London, is co-author of The Care Manifesto (Verso, 2020) as well as author of The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism (Oxford UP, 2018).

 

Bet You Never Thought You’d Miss the Rules-Based Order

by Ted Snider Posted onFebruary 06, 2025

Once upon a time, there was something called international law. It was a set of codified laws that had the United Nations as its firm foundation and that applied universally and impartially to all nations. Then, at some point, international law was replaced by the rules-based order. Based not on impartiality with the UN as its foundation, the rules-based order is based on selective application with the U.S. and American exceptionalism as its foundation. Protected behind a façade of universality, the U.S. applies the rules when it suites them and exempts itself from the rules when it does not. In a single act that Richard Sakwa has called the “great substitution,” the American hegemon usurped the power of the Security Council and replaced the codified international laws with the unwritten rules-based order.

But still in those days, the U.S. wore the mask of international law. They recognized that they were at their most powerful when it looked like the UN and the international community were behind them. Wars were dressed up as humanitarian interventions and coups were disguised as democracy. But U.S. President Donald Trump has thrown aside the disguise and exposed America’s nature. Trump has sped passed the signposts of international law without a wave. It took President William McKinley fifty days to smash the sovereignty of the first five nations America betrayed; it has taken Trump only fifteen to threaten four.

In his February 4th press conference, Trump announced that “[t]he US will take over the Gaza strip and we will do a job with it too. We’ll own it and… level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out. Create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area.”

“Never mind that he could name no legal authority that would permit the United States to unilaterally assert control over someone else’s territory,” The New York Times said, “or that the forcible removal of an entire population would be a violation of international law.” The president who promised only days ago that his legacy would be “a peacemaker” whose success would be measured by “the wars that we end – and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into” sped past international law so fast he left himself behind.

Trump’s plan “to resettle people permanently” might not only involve sending US troops “[i]f it’s necessary,” it could set off a devastating region wide war. And, though Trump says “[t]his was not a decision I made lightly,” it is a decision that shoots in the foot his dreamt of lifetime legacy of extending the Abraham accords to Saudi Arabia, who, once again, in “a clear and explicit manner,” said it would not establish diplomatic relations with Israel without a Palestinian state. American real estate property does not legally constitute a Palestinian state.

Trump’s remarks were only his most recent remarks threatening another people’s sovereignty. Trump has threatened to use “economic force” to “get rid of that artificially drawn line” between Canada and the United States. “What I’d like to see,” Trump said, “is Canada become our 51st state.”

Despite Trump’s case against Canada and his claim that “[t]he fentanyl coming through Canada is massive” and that Canada and Mexico, “Canada very much so,” have “allowed millions and millions of people to come into our country that shouldn’t be here,” Canada accounts for only 0.2% of the fentanyl that enters the U.S. and only 6.9% of the migrants.

And, despite Trump’s claim that “[m]any Canadians want Canada to become the 51st State,” the most recent polling shows that 90% of Canadians oppose joining the United States.

Going beyond even his statements on Canada, Trump has refused to rule out taking Greenland militarily. When asked if he would rule out military force, Trump refused, saying, “I’m not going to commit to that. It might be that you’ll have to do something… We need Greenland for national security purposes.” Trump has called acquiring Greenland “an absolute necessity.” Making military threats against Denmark is nothing less than an unprecedented military threat against a NATO ally.

And Trump has made military threats against the sovereignty of Panama too. When asked if he would rule out using the U.S. military to seize control of the Panama Canal, Trump said, “I’m not going to commit to that. It might be that you’ll have to do something. The Panama Canal is vital to our country.”

America has gone to war with Panama before when that country had done nothing to threaten it. America has gone to war before to steal another country’s resources. And America has bared its neocolonial teeth before. But in laying it bare and honestly exposing its disrespect for sovereignty and for international law the way Trump is, America risks losing not only its hegemony in the world but the world.

Who would make a deal with the US after Trump illegally broke the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran? Who would commit to taking on the U.S. as its largest trade partner when Trump declared economic war on Canada, its closet friend and trade partner? And who would commit to security arrangements with the U.S. when Trump threatens Denmark, a close NATO ally, militarily?

As the American hegemon turns even on its allies and leaves international law, and even the rules-based order, behind, it risks trading its leadership in the world for being alone in the world.

Ted Snider is a regular columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets. To support his work or for media or virtual presentation requests, contact him at tedsnider@bell.net.

 THE RULE OF (BURGEOIS) LAW

Tariffs and the Constitution

by Andrew P. Napolitano Posted onFebruary 07, 2025

The taxing power in the federal government resides in the Congress. The Constitution states that Congress has the power to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts” of the federal government. Indeed, in order to emphasize the location of this power in the Congress, the Constitution also requires that all legislation “for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.”

So, if only Congress can impose taxes, how can the president impose tariffs?

Here is the backstory.

However one characterizes a tariff, since it consists of the compulsory payment of money to the federal government, it is a form of taxation. It is – to use James Madison’s language – a duty or an impost. The federal government survived on duties and imposts – some of which were imposed on the states – from the time of its creation in 1789 until the War Between the States. Even under Abraham Lincoln, when unconstitutional income taxes were imposed, they were done by legislation, not executive fiat.

Then came Franklin D. Roosevelt and a congressional ban on the exportation of armaments to be implemented at the president’s discretion. This sounds fairly benign, yet it fomented the supercharged presidency that we have today. When Congress banned the sale of American arms to foreign countries, it did so by giving FDR the power to decide what to ban and upon which countries to impose the ban. Then it did the unthinkable: It made a violation of the president’s fiats a federal crime.

I call this unthinkable because under the Constitution’s Due Process Clause jurisprudence, at the federal level only Congress can make behavior criminal.

In defiance of FDR’s ban, Curtiss-Wright Export Corporation, an American manufacturer of military hardware, sold armaments to the government of Bolivia, and the Department of Justice persuaded a federal grand jury to indict the corporation. Then a federal judge dismissed the indictment on the constitutional basis that only Congress can decide what behavior is criminal and it cannot give that power to the president.

The trial court merely enforced the well-known and universally accepted non-delegation doctrine. It stands for the principle that the three branches of government cannot delegate away any of their core powers. Among Congress’ core powers is writing laws and deciding what behavior is criminal. By giving away this power to the president, the trial court ruled, Congress violated the non-delegation principle, and thus FDR’s determination that arms sales to Bolivia was criminal was itself a nullity.

The government appealed directly to the Supreme Court. Had the court simply reversed the trial judge and sent the case back to him for trial, we might never have heard of this case or the policy it established.

Yet, instead of a simple reversal, the Court issued a treatise on presidential power. Using truly novel rationale written by Justice George Sutherland, the court held that, even though the power to establish foreign policy is not expressly given to the president, that power – are you ready for this? – traveled across the Atlantic in 1789 from King George III to President George Washington and was permanently reposed in the presidency.

It doesn’t stop there.

In furtherance of his pursuit of foreign policy, the president need not consult the Congress and need not require legislation. Stated differently, because the president, Justice Sutherland wrote, is the sole keeper of the country’s foreign policy, he requires tools in order to do so, and among the tools available to him to effectuate that policy is the power to make behavior that defies his foreign policy a crime; also among those tools is the power to tax in furtherance of his foreign policy.

This logic appears nowhere in the Constitution. Justice Sutherland, who was born in Great Britain, analogized American presidential power in foreign relations to that of British monarchs in the era before parliamentary supremacy. And this utter nonsense is still the law today!

Now back to tariffs.

Regrettably, the Curtiss-Wright case – though wrongly decided and absurdly reasoned – is still good law today, and presidents from FDR to Donald Trump have relied upon its authority for their unilateral decisions on American foreign policy. I call this regrettable because it constitutes a pronounced transfer of power from Congress to the president, in defiance of the Constitution.

FDR gave us the welfare state. Perhaps Donald Trump will undo it.

But all this happens at the price of constitutional norms. Before Curtiss-Wright – and even since – the Supreme Court ruled that all federal power comes from the Constitution and from no other source. That’s because James Madison and his colleagues created a central government of limited powers – limited by and articulated in the Constitution.

But Curtiss-Wright says some federal power comes from Great Britain! So, where does this leave us?

The Congress is not a general legislature like the British Parliament, and the president is not a monarch. To argue that powers come from some source other than the Constitution is anti-constitutional. And in this case, to claim with a straight face that George III’s powers were reposed into the American presidency is an absurdity that would have been rejected summarily and unambiguously by the Framers.

History and politics often change the rules. Until 110 years ago, with the exception of Lincoln’s presidency, the federal government operated under the Madisonian model: The federal government can only do that which is expressly authorized by the Constitution.

From and after the dreadful Progressive Era, the Wilsonian model has prevailed – the federal government can address any national problem for which there is a political will, subject only to that which is expressly prohibited by the Constitution. Add to the Wilsonian model the nonsense from Curtiss-Wright, and you have a presidency that can tax any foreign event and create a domestic crime.

Even George III lacked such powers.

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the US Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty. To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.

COPYRIGHT 2021 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO – DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

 

Heads Up, the Revolution is Already Here

It’s Revolution or Death, Part 2

by subMedia / February 8th, 2025

State and market solutions to the ecological crisis have only increased the wealth and power of those on top, while greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. Nearly all the experts and professionals are invested, literally, in a framework that is only making things worse. With so much power concentrated in the very institutions that suppress any realistic assessment of the situation, things seem incredibly bleak. But what if we told you that there’s another way? That there are already people all around the world implementing immediate, effective responses that can be integrated into long-term strategies to survive these overlapping, cascading crises?

We spoke with three revolutionaries on the front lines resisting capitalist, colonial projects. Sleydo’ from the Gidimt’en clan of the Wet’suwet’en nation, in so-called British Columbia, Isa from the ZAD in the west of France, and Neto, a militant with the Landless Workers’ Movement based in the northeast of so-called Brazil. They share their experiences gained from years of building collective power, defeating repression, and defending the Earth for all its inhabitants and for the generations still to come.

They share stories of solidarity spreading across a continent, of people abandoned to poverty and marginalization reclaiming land, restoring devastated forests, and feeding themselves communally, stories of strangers coming together for their shared survival and a better future, going head to head with militarized police forces and winning. And in these stories we can hear things that are lacking almost everywhere else we look: optimism alongside realism, intelligent strategies for how we can survive, love and empathy for the world around us and for the future generations, together with the belief that we can do something meaningful, something that makes a difference. The joy of revolutionary transformation.

We learn about solutions. Real world solutions. Solutions outside of the control of capitalism and the state.

The Revolution is Already Here.

Next up: how do we make it our own?

Revolution or Death is a three-part collaboration between Peter Gelderloos and subMedia. Part 1, ‘Short Term Investments,’ examined the official response to the climate crisis and how it’s failing. In Part 2, ‘Heads Up, the Revolution is Already Here’ we talk with movements around the globe that provide inspiring examples of what realistic, effective responses look like. Part 3 ‘Reclaiming the World Wherever We Stand’ will focus on how we can all apply these lessons at home.Facebook

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SubMedia is directed and produced by Frank Lopez. Read other articles by subMedia, or visit subMedia's website.

U$ Veterans Oppose Mass Deportation and Domestic Military Deployments

Veterans Oppose Mass Deportation and Domestic Military Deployments

by Veterans for Peace / February 7th, 2025

Veterans For Peace strongly objects to the Trump Administration’s racist campaign of mass deportation of undocumented workers, who are our friends, neighbors and even our fellow veterans. We condemn the violent raids that are sowing fear and terror in communities across the United States.  As veterans, we are particularly opposed to the misuse and abuse of U.S. military personnel, including their illegal deployment to the U.S. border with Mexico.

Since Donald Trump’s inauguration, about 1,000 U.S. Army personnel and 500 Marines have been sent to the border, in addition to 2,500 National Guard members already there. Helicopter units are being sent along with U.S. Air Force C-17 and C- 130 aircraft; and Stars and Stripes reports that 20-ton Stryker armored combat vehicles may also be shipped. The number of U.S. military personnel on the U.S.-Mexico border may rise to as many as 10,000, according to the Defense One newsletter.

The use of active-duty military personnel for domestic policing operations is strictly forbidden by the Posse Comitatus Act, and legal challenges are being mounted.  President Trump says he may invoke the Insurrection Act, which effectively overrides Posse Comitatus by allowing the Executive to declare a national emergency requiring the domestic deployment of US troops. But using the Insurrection Act to override the protections of the Posse Comitatus Act and deploy U.S. troops within the United States to investigate, detain, and remove illegal immigrants would be an unprecedented use of presidential power and misuse of the military, according to a recent report by the New York Bar.

What we have here is a U.S. president who is willing to engage thousands of U.S. military personnel in what appears – among other atrocities – to be a profit-making scheme based on a contrived border crisis.  According to Customs and Border Protection data, monthly migrant apprehensions along the U.S.-Mexico border between December 2023 and December 2024 were reduced dramatically from 249,740 to 47,326 apprehensions. Nevertheless, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials reportedly want to build four new detention centers with 10,000 beds each, along with 14 smaller facilities that each contain around 1,000 beds each. According to the American Immigration Counsel, “That would likely mean tens of billions in taxpayer funds sent to private prison companies,” at least one of whom, CoreCivic, donated $500,000 to the Trump-Vance inaugural committee.

Trump is also calling for 30,000 immigrants to be detained at the notorious US gulag at Guantanamo Bay, where U.S. laws and protections do not exist. This would also be another slap in the face of Cuba’s sovereignty over its own territory.

Tragically, this bogus campaign is terrifying, and profoundly disrupting the lives of millions of peaceful, extremely hard-working, tax-paying members of U.S. society. Even as the US government is complicit in the ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians from Gaza, it is now “cleansing” the US of immigrants, many of whom are indigenous to North America. According to a recent report by Human Rights Watch, the “border deterrence” policy – now being carried out with soldiers and Marines – causes the death of more than 2,500 migrants per year, as they are intentionally forced onto the most perilous routes.

These abuses of U.S. law and human rights put US military personnel in a very difficult position.  What can active-duty military and National Guard members do when they do not want to be used in an illegal and immoral campaign against their neighbors, or even their own families?

Veterans to GI’s:  We Will Support You When You Refuse Illegal or Immoral Orders

Just because the president says so does not make it legal. You swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America.  You have the legal right and obligation to do so. Veterans For Peace supports U.S. military personnel who choose not to participate in the U.S.-Mexico border deployment, or in sending weapons to Gaza, or in other questionable military activities around the globe.  We will put you in touch with trained counselors and lawyers who can advise you of your legal rights.

You can start by calling the GI Rights Hotline at 1-877-447-4487. You can legally contact your Congressional representatives to tell them your concerns by utilizing the Appeal for Redress. And be sure to check out the recently updated Know Your Rights guide from the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild.

As veterans of illegal, immoral US wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and too many other places, we understand that you are in a tough place.  But you do have options – you are still the boss of your own life.  When you follow your conscience and stand up for what is right, you will have the support of Veterans For Peace.Facebook

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Veterans For Peace is a national organization founded in 1985 by military veterans opposed to the Reagan administration's war against the people of Central America. It includes men and women veterans of all eras and duty stations spanning the Spanish Civil War, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Persian Gulf, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, other conflicts and periods in between. Read other articles by Veterans for Peace, or visit Veterans for Peace's website.

 

Black History Month and the Nobodies

by Paul Haeder / February 7th, 2025

Since his second inauguration, the billionaire, known for his highly discriminatory anti-immigrant mentality and behavior, has taken the toughest measures in favor of a “cleansing” that will have terrible consequences, even for unborn children.

And here we go with a continual slide into fascism, and, yes, a fascist nation turns on its own people. Fascism can also come into the light of the 21^st century as techno-feudalism, another form of elite billionaires and their ground troops strangling the working class, even professional managerial class, through digital tracking, surveillance and behavioral modificaton.

Trump’s hatred of diverse workforces, hatred of equitable hiring practices and his love of class inequities will bring the chickens home to roost.

Even this nation’s economic/literal hit men (and hit women), the CIA, is worried about recruitment now that Trump is bulldozing fairness and affirmative action which is in place to level some playing fields: “We’re going to strangle off talent pipelines that were already narrow to begin with. And that’s going to deprive our intelligence community and our national security establishment of critical knowledge, talent, skills, language … that might be valuable in trying to get somebody into a foreign country,”

Black History month should be transformed into a total curriculum revamp so youth can understand slavery then, followed by the Jim Crowe era, and now with the Racist in Chief and his goons calling for internment camps and tossing people who disagree with capitalism and him – this penury, predatory, parasitic, casino capitalism – out of the country.

We are – I have many targets on my back – the Nobodies. It is instructive to read the following poem as a dirge for this country’s slide into despotism: By Eduardo Galeano

The Nobodies

Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream of escaping
poverty: that one magical day good luck will suddenly rain down on
them—will rain down in buckets. But good luck doesn’t rain down
yesterday, today, tomorrow, or ever. Good luck doesn’t even fall in a
fine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their
left hand is tickling, or if they begin the new day with their right
foot, or start the new year with a change of brooms.

The nobodies: nobody’s children, owners of nothing. The nobodies: the
no ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits, dying through life,
screwed every which way.

Who are not, but could be.
Who don’t speak languages, but dialects.
Who don’t have religions, but superstitions.
Who don’t create art, but handicrafts.
Who don’t have culture, but folklore.
Who are not human beings, but human resources.
Who do not have faces, but arms.
Who do not have names, but numbers.
Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the police
blotter of the local paper.
The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them.”

For Black History Month, we can see how disconnected our so-called elected officials are with the majority of working class people of all ethnicities: In a study done by Nicholas Carnes in his book “The Cash Ceiling,” he broke down how in 2018, millionaires make up only three percent of the public, yet they control all three branches of the federal government. While more than fifty percent of U.S. citizens hold working-class jobs, less than two percent of Congress has held a blue-collar job before their Congressional career.

So how can these people understand environmental racism when they are part of the problem?

Trump’s Team and many in MAGA can’t wrap their arms around the fact Black people face some of the highest cancer and asthma rates in the U.S. These rates are without a doubt linked to the environment in which someone lives, works and plays. When African-American Robert D. Bullard began collecting data in the 1970s, few understood how a person’s surroundings can affect their health. Bullard was even surprised how segregated the most polluted places really were.

Bullard was the first scientist to publish systematic research on the links between race and exposure to pollution, which he documented for a 1979 lawsuit.

“This is before everyone had [geographic information system] mapping, before iPads, iPhones, laptops, Google,” he said. “This is doing research way back with a hammer and a chisel.”

This is what Black History month means for many of my former Latino, Native American and Black college students: Highlighting and studying men like Bullard. With 18 books under his belt on this topic, Bullard’s work launched a movement, the environmental justice movement.

Imagine a presidential candidate or even president’s cabinet embracing this baseline — that everyone has the right to a clean and healthy environment, no matter their race or class.

Former vice presidential running mate with Jill Stein, Amaju Baraka states this new time strongly:

“It is Western imperialism, led by the U.S. that is responsible for the billions of human beings living in poverty, it is imperialism that degrades and destroys the earth, that makes water a commodity, food a luxury, education an impossibility and health care a distant dream. It is the rapacious greed and absolute disregard for human life by imperialism that drives the arms trade, turns human incarceration into a profitable enterprise and transforms millions into migrants and refugees because of war and economic plunder.”

Carter G. Woodson was the impetus behind today’s Black History month. In 1924, he was instrumental in the creation of Negro History and Literature Week, renamed Negro Achievement Week. The month of February has stuck, since the organizers of the first celebration picked this month because two valorized men’s birthdays fall in February: Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, the 12th and the 14th respectively.

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Paul Haeder's been a teacher, social worker, newspaperman, environmental activist, and marginalized muckraker, union organizer. Paul's book, Reimagining Sanity: Voices Beyond the Echo Chamber (2016), looks at 10 years (now going on 17 years) of his writing at Dissident Voice. Read his musings at LA Progressive. Read (purchase) his short story collection, Wide Open Eyes: Surfacing from Vietnam now out, published by Cirque Journal. Here's his Amazon page with more published work Amazon. Read other articles by Paul, or visit Paul's website.

 

We Know How This Will End …

by John Rachel / February 7th, 2025

Swords into Ploughshares

What if the citizens of Germany during the 1930s somehow could have known in advance how World War II was going to end? Would they have bought into the lies of Hitler and the Third Reich? Would they have gone along with the wanton aggression knowing it was a suicide mission and would turn their beloved homeland into a pile of rubble and put nearly 9,000,000 of them in early graves?

What about Japan? Before World War II, Japan was securely locked down. No dissent from the imperialistic designs of the emperor and his military class was permitted. Even so, if the vast majority had known that like Germany, their nation would be almost completely destroyed and they’d lose over 3,000,000 people for nothing, would they have so willingly and enthusiastically rushed to the battlefield to invite annihilation and defeat?

Our leaders — our cowardly, divisive, destructive, unimaginative, delusional American leaders — from Barack Obama to Joe Biden to Donald Trump, are taking America into another war. Sure, the confrontation with Russia in Ukraine will soon be over.  While Trump supposedly gets America’s house in order, war will be put on the back burner. But only for now. Only because we have been humbled by Russia and spared from total humiliation by the statesmanship of Vladimir Putin.

But make no mistake about it. So far it’s been Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine. Next it’s Iran, and eventually — the big target in our game of thrones — China. It’s all part of the same flawed over-reaching strategy that predates even Bill Clinton, even Ronald Reagan. Our pathological plan for achieving unnecessary and ill-conceived hegemony over the Middle East and Eurasia, over the entire planet, may at times appear to be on hold, but it will not go away, and it won’t go away unless we make it go away.

As uninformed and misinformed as we Americans generally are, we know how this is going to end. It doesn’t take a genius to see that despite our incredible military prowess and huge advantage in the quantity and sophistication of weaponry in our arsenal, we are really bad at war. Maybe it feels good to thump our chests and yell “mission accomplished” with a big shit-eating smirk on our faces, but our self-congratulations bear no relation to reality. We lost terribly in Vietnam. We lost in Afghanistan. We made a mess out of Iraq and now have little control over the developments in that country. Libya is a disaster. We fingered Syria for destruction and with the recent fall of Assad, instead of gaining credibility in the world, the US become the object of derision, condemned for starving the country into submission and being complicit in the takeover of Syria by hateful, head-chopping terrorists. As a result of our immoral and barbaric support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, we have been shamed and assaulted by vilification from overseas and a surprising and encouraging swell of criticism at home.  In Ukraine, the US and NATO are about to suffer one of the most humiliating defeats in recent history, as Russia dictates an end to the war exclusively on its terms.

The unavoidable truth is, we have a horrible track record over the last sixty years of muscle-flexing military escapades, and except for the Russian army in Ukraine, haven’t even had to face what might be regarded as a formidable world-class enemy. God help us if we do go toe-to-toe with China, now joined at the hip with Russia and other BRICS nations.

Actually, God help the entire human race!

As we swagger into the OK corral twirling our guns and acting all cocky and cool, because after all we are so exceptional and so entitled and so self-righteous and so powerful and of course always have God on our side, what are the options? Apparently the only way we might possibly “win” a real war against a serious enemy is if we go nuclear. And if we go nuclear, they will too.

And we all know how that will turn out.

So if we know in advance how World War III will end, why would anyone — except the demented neocon imperialist cotorie of hell bent fanatics, who can plead the insanity defense — push for war? Which is the same as saying, why would anyone in their right mind go along with this madness?

Because we — you and I — do know how it will end.

Either we’re going to get our asses kicked or we’re going to destroy all civilization and risk the extinction of the human race.

Ask the Germans how things worked out for them when they tried to conquer the world.

Ask the Japanese.

I live in Japan. I already know how the Japanese feel about war. I know the shame they feel about their dark and vile history of aggression in pursuit of all manner of illusory glory and mountains of booty.

No, I don’t live in America any more. But I’m still a loyal American. I deeply care for my country. And I know this.

We can’t count on the lying liars who claim to have our interests at heart, the play-for-pay politicians who are the lapdogs for the military-industrial complex and the bankers who build their staggering fortunes on the corpses of our soldiers and the tens of thousands of civilians who are collateral damage for our drones, carpet bombings and ordinance.

We cannot look to the barbaric megalomaniacs in positions of power who claim to share our values, and have the unmitigated audacity to talk about humanitarian bombing and merciful intervention, to claim we are protecting innocent people against ruthless dictators — killing thousands of innocent victims in the process — all in the name of promoting democracy and human rights, when every one of these wars is about gas and oil interests for their corporate butt buddies. To add even more hypocrisy to the insults and injuries, it is our military which possesses and employs more weapons of mass destruction than any other country in the world and it is our nation which counts among its friends and allies some of the most ruthless tyrants on the planet.

We sure can’t look to the leadership of the most sociopathic president in our history, a man who has telegraphed up front his intent to steal the Panama Canal, who openly confessed that the U.S. was in Syria purely there to steal the oil, who is intimidating one of our own allies to grab Greenland. Biden was thoroughly an irredeemable warmonger beginning to end. Our last best “hope” might have been Barack Obama. But after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, he put the whole world on notice in a U.N. speech:  “The United States of America is prepared to use all elements of our power, including military force, to secure our core interests in the region. We will confront external aggression against our allies and partners, as we did in the Gulf War.”

True to form, currently there is no one in Congress or in any way associated with the White House who wants peace.

That means it’s up to us.

It’s up to each and every American to say ‘NO’ to the madness.

It’s up to us to stop all the talk about war.

It’s up to us to demand a true and honest commitment to diplomacy and cooperation with other countries, not the simpleminded, hollow, meaningless blather that we’re being fed as the trigger-fingers of our war mongers tingle and twitch, just waiting for the right moment to churn up more carnage, destruction and hatred in the rest of the world.

Yes … we do know how this story ends.

It’s time for a new story.Facebook

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John Rachel has a B.A. in Philosophy, has traveled extensively, is a songwriter, music producer, neo-Marxist, and a bipolar humanist. He has written eight novels and three political non-fiction books. His most recent polemic is The Peace Dividend: The Most Controversial Proposal in the History of the World. His political articles have appeared at many alternative media outlets. He is now somewhat rooted in a small traditional farming village in Japan near Osaka, where he proudly tends his small but promising vegetable garden. Scribo ergo sum. Read other articles by John, or visit John's website.