Vincible Ignorance

Vincible Ignorance

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”  - MLK

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”  - George Orwell

By J.M. Hamilton (3-14-2015)

Debate classes and clubs in high school and college present an excellent opportunity.  Not only does debate teach research and writing skills, but it sharpens oratory skills and critical thinking.  In particular, logic and concise and cogent analysis are imperative to any successful debater.  But perhaps of equal importance, organized debate teaches individuals the ability spot flaws in an opponent’s thinking, logic, or argumentation.  Fallacious reasoning surrounds us, not only within the debater’s arena, but in our daily lives.  And it is our ability to spot faulty logic, fallacious reasoning, and even sophistry, that can help one navigate through this world.

Out of all the fallacies that are out there, one stands alone in exhaustive usage by today’s GOP.  It is the fallacy of invincible ignorance.  Ignorance, of course, envelopes all of us to varying degrees (after all, who is omnipotent… save the Goddess above?); but the GOP has taken the fallacy of invincible ignorance and turned it into an art form.  Nescience, today, is being used as political cover by right-wingers to justify: bigotry, homophobia, denying science, continuing failed economic and bellicose foreign policies, and to rationalize revisionist history. 

Now before we get into enumerating the many ways in which Republicans utilize nescience to justify a multitude of disingenuous and harmful policies for the nation, a quick digression.

If you drill deeper there’s actually a dichotomy or subset of this particular fallacy.  There’s invincible ignorance and vincible ignorance, that is to the say, in the case of the latter, ignorance that is possible to defeat.  And how does one go about defeating vincable ignorance, or culpable nescience?   By picking up a book, by reading the paper, and by visiting that most useful of search engines, Google.  Now, I know there are many critics of the information contained within the internet, but if you run a search on a particular topic, and you’re able to come up with three or more independent and reliable sources, confirming the same set of facts, the odds are high that it’s true.  This dichotomy is important because it will come up again, at the tail end of this piece.  Remember, there’s invincible ignorance, based upon answers that we have yet to, or may never, learn, and vincible ignorance, that is based upon knowledge that some people willfully refuse to learn (often as a matter of political convenience).

With that said, let’s visit the many ways in which today’s GOP uses invincible ignorance to defend their policies:

1) Climate Change:  It’s not enough for the GOP to utilize ignorance to deny man made climate change.  Not only do Republicans say that they are not “scientist,” hence have no way of knowing whether or not climate change exists; but they have taken it a step further, and actually, paid off “academics” to prove their point.  That’s right, the Koch Bros. and Exxon, have contributed significant funding to a scientist to produce reports with an, alleged, desirable outcome (that is, favorable to the interest of carbon producing industries, big oil and big coal).  That a key GOP patron, Exxon, has already admitted that there is man-made climate change, is irrelevant to many within the GOP.  And when it cannot buy off academics, it appears that Florida’s Republican Governor, Rick Scott, is editing academic papers, making sure that words like “climate change” are stricken from academic research and dissertations.  Apparently, per the GOP and SCOTUS, the only persons allowed to practice freedom of speech in America today, are wealthy plutocrats holding vaults full of cash, particularly when it comes to opining about the environment.  After all, everyone understands: Exxon knows best.

2)    A Threat to Higher Education:  Wisconsin Governor, and prospective GOP candidate, Mr. Scott Walker, recently decided to align himself with ignorance, when he advocated and supported substantial cuts to higher education, with budget reductions for the University of Wisconsin.  Bucky Badger must be pi$$ed.  But is Mr. Walker really aligned with ignorance, or is there political calculation in his plans to gut the University of Wisconsin’s funding?  My guess is it is the latter, since it is fairly well established that those with university degrees, and graduate degrees in particular, are far more likely to vote for the Democratic Party.  Heh, if you cut off higher education, you keep people nescient, less educated, more easily exploitable, tuned into Fox News, and more likely to vote Republican.  Is Governor Walker, who does not possess a college degree, practicing invincible ignorance or is it simple cynical political manipulation?

3)    Raptors on the Ark:  The next example is priceless, and it is as scary as it is humorous.  My niece is in grade school and attends a private Christian school in Tejas.  I was home for Christmas and the topic of Noah’s Ark came up.  She told me that she was taught at school that there were dinosaurs on the ark.  The image of carnivores, like T-Rex and raptors, running around on the ark made me pause; but what my niece is being taught also ties into the belief that the world, to some Christians, is only 4,000 to 10,000 years old (much like the world was once flat).  That these religious opinions make their way into children’s textbooks as fact – without an alternative/scientific counterpoint - is disturbing, but it doesn’t stop there.  Some fundamentalist Christians, and Deep South Republicans, are also hijacking early college education textbooks in history, so American history is revised to gloss over less appealing parts of our nation’s past (like slavery and manifest destiny, and how white’s perverted Christianity, in some instances, to rationalize same), not unlike totalitarian nations’ deployment of revisionist history.  Find an inconvenient historical fact, or science that doesn’t agree with one’s literal interpretation of the Bible…. That’s easy, apply invincible ignorance, and discard the facts and rewrite history.  This is very important because evangelical and fundamentalist Christians are the GOP’s core political base; and the GOP has become so unappealing to many Americans that you know they better damn well continue to pander to the religious- right.  Personally, I prefer to think of knowledge, enlightenment, and science as a gift from our Goddess, but too many Christians view them as a threat.

4)    Abdicating Foreign Policy to a Foreign Head of State.  The GOP presumably isn’t smart enough to develop its own foreign policy, so it has abdicated responsibility (just as Mr. Romney said he would back in 2012) to Israeli Prime Minister, Netanyahu.  And while Israel is a great ally, the idea that U.S. foreign policy interests may not be entirely aligned with Israel’s never seems to dawn on the GOP.  Of course, the GOP, like Mr. Netanyahu, has never seen a war that it does not like (especially since Republicans, and their sons and daughters, rarely do any fighting).  So scuttle Obama’s pending nuclear treaty with the Iranians, they must…. All the better to start another war to please the GOP’s true owners, the MIC, Big Oil, and the Wall Street cartel – who will only be too happy to finance the war.  And Israel is the big winner in all this.  P.M. Netanyahu can always depend upon the GOP to land the U.S. in another endless and failed, Middle-East nation building exercise, at American taxpayer expense.  As for the GOP’s base, the evangelicals….?   They eat this up, as it’s just another war that will lead to an “end of days” scenario, and the rebuilding of the Temple Mount.  Another GOP led disaster of a war is on the horizon, if Republicans get their way, despite the U.S. having achieved domestic energy independence many times over.  But the price is too low at the pump… Exxon and the Koch Bros. need another Middle-East war to jump start fuel prices.  There’s a method to the GOP foreign policy ignorance and madness, it’s called answering to their masters.

5)    Banking Deregulation and Trickle-Down Economics:  Banking deregulation directly led to the global financial pandemic in 2008.  Trickle-down economics (aka tax cuts for the rich) has led to deficit spending, wage and wealth concentration, a dearth of aggregate demand, and stagnating wages.  The negative repercussions of both trickle down economics, bank dereg., and the failure of the Congress to govern, are a Federal Reserve produced liquidity trap, and a lost Japanese decade of subpar economic growth brought to America, despite recent improvements in the economy.  Regardless of the economic mayhem banking dereg caused as recently as 2008, the GOP has been successful is sneaking banking dereg language into omnibus spending measures and congressional bills, since taking both houses of Congress in 2014.  Republican governors have also applied trickle-down in state after state, with the same ruinous results:  credit rating downgrades, deficit spending, increased debt, and cuts to social spending.  All of which are born on the backs of Mr. Romney’s parasitic 47%.  Yup, the rich keep getting richer, and the poor – and what remains of the middle-class – keep getting scrod.  And the GOP utilizes invincible ignorance to pretend that their fairy tale laissez faire policies still work.

We could fill another several pages with example after example of where the GOP buries its head in the sand, and deploys invincible ignorance, but we’ll save those for another editorial and another day.  Suffice it to say, the GOP used to be on the cutting edge of ideas and political intellect, and now time, extremism, and repeated failure have left them with little more for defense, than nescience and obstruction. 

As for the dichotomy mentioned earlier in the piece, between invincible ignorance, and vincible, or culpable, ignorance…. Well, that actually goes back to Catholic teaching, in particular Pope Pius IX, and possibly, as far back as Thomas Aquinas. It seems that some Catholics have argued that while invincible ignorance – nescience that we do not have the ability or due diligence to address – is not a mortal sin, that vincible ignorance - or nescience that we do have it within our power to address and throw down…. May in fact be a mortal sin, particularly when it is accompanied by a willful and a stubborn refusal to learn.

But who am I to judge.

Reminds me of Santayana’s remark, with my own personal twist:  Those who cannot learn from history, and science, are destined for extinction.  It also reminds me that ignorance is bliss, particularly for the 1%.

The GOP seems to be practicing, knowingly, vincible ignorance.  Time and time again, in the face of overwhelming and mounting evidence to the contrary, the GOP simply refuses to learn.  Worse still, this malign ignorance all too often appears to be based upon a desire, and deployed, to enrich an elite few at the expense of many.   After all, while the GOP’s ignorance appears to be willful, nobody could possibly be that consistently fatuous.

There’s a lot of good Republicans out there who need real guidance and leadership.  Senator John McCain still shows flashes of leadership and straight talk; and Senator Rand Paul gave me high hopes, up until he joined 47 U.S. Senators in deciding to perform an attempted coup on President Obama’s foreign policy.  Sorry boys and girls, until you can win back the White House, you are not in the driver’s seat on U.S. foreign policy; but to win back the White House, the GOP needs to prove to the nation that they are capable of sailing something more than a ship of fools, like the ship of state.

P.S.   

John Oliver recently did a piece on HBO where he commented on how the citizens of the U.S. territories of Guam and American Samoa are “Americans” in name only, despite serving in the U.S. armed forces in highly disproportionate numbers.  Watch it here.  I bring this up because this seems to be consistent with the type of commercial colonialism that is prevalent in the 20^th and 21^st centuries, and that the U.S., particularly Republicans, likes to beat its collective chest over.  To wit:  The U.S. is the only world power who has not imposed its will upon foreign nations, and sought out territorial conquest and hegemonic control. 

But let’s be clear on this point, the U.S. and multinationals do not do this out of some higher benevolence; but rather, U.S. corporations engage in commercial conquest globally, with the support of the U.S. military and State Department, so that labor, tax, and regulatory arbitrage can be committed by U.S. and global multinational interests.  That’s right.  The name of the game in the latter half of the 20^th and early part of the 21^st centuries is the exploitation of third world and emerging markets, w/out taking on the expense and responsibility of governing these countries.  (Besides, if you give U.S. territories and third world countries the vote, that just might upset the U.S. balance of power, away from our two party system and the White race.  Israel faces a similar challenge with the Palestinian question – demographics and birth rates favor the Palestinians.)  Make no mistake about it, American multinational corporations – much like London’s 18^th Century, East India Company before it – are engaged in a profitable game of commercial conquest. Unlike the East India Company however, today’s multinationals have no interest, neither does the U.S. government, in physically taking over these countries; and multinationals certainly have no interest in providing social services, establishing the rule of law, mandating human rights, or getting involved politically (and in so much as territorial, and third world, politics and politicians’ ambitions and goals do not conflict with U.S. multinational business interests and profits, that’s all the better). 

There's a reason why there are only fifty stars on the American flag, that goes beyond aesthetics, and that number is highly unlikely to grow any time soon.  

Selah.

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2015

American Exceptionalism

American Exceptionalism

“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they have tried everything else.”
- Winston Churchill

By J.M. Hamilton  (3-1-15)

The GOP, minions of the plutocracy, has had a lock on U.S. politics for the last thirty-five years.  Its domestic and foreign policy of trickle-down economics and endless war, respectively, aside from enriching the plutocracy to the near exclusion of everyone else, have been abject failures.  The Republican Party holds the majority of state legislative bodies and governor’s mansions, and in state after state, we see deficit spending, broken state budgets, failing infrastructure, credit rating cuts, and social services cut to the bone.  If Demos are tax and spend, Republicans are borrow and spend, and the latter – to this fiscal conservative – is considerably worse.  There are many apologist for debt, but all one has to do is look to the Southern periphery nations of Europe to realize that not only does debt rob our children of their futurity, but it makes nation states slaves to unsavory masters, such as the international banking cartel, the ECB, the IMF, and/or in this country, the Fed’s printing press (and politicians owned by same).

The Republican Party is the bastion of the angry white male, and while I am on very rare occasion “angry,” and inescapably both white and male, like the majority of Americans, I recognize the GOP as a political party in decline.  This party has no solutions, cannot govern, is retrograde, racist, and about as far removed from Christian values as Satan.  It is fighting a rearguard action against the future and history.  Even The Party recognizes its future in President Obama’s rising poll numbers; and barring significant change, led by tolerant/libertarian leaders like Rand Paul, the GOP finds itself staring into the abyss. 

Aside from the ideology of freedom espoused by Mr. Paul, the only thing the GOP can count on these days is the Democratic Party’s inexplicable ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, when Dems do not hold true to protecting the middle-class from the, all too often, predatory 1%.

What do the angry and the daunted do when cornered, and exposed for who they are?  They lash out, and fear-monger; they are prone to misdirection and obfuscation, and ultimately, resort to demagoguery.  Who falls for such tactics (?): The fearful, the angry and the nescient.  After all, nobody really likes change, particularly the rich and the powerful (who benefit most from the status quo); and the wealthy and the powerful have had their way with Lady Liberty, at the expense of the 99%, for a very long time. 

The remedy for such tactics is: activism, education, enlightenment, and exposing the fear peddlers and the exploiters to the sanitizing light of day.

Two recent examples of the Party of Fear, and the Party of Dumbed Down Madness, were on full display in the last couple of weeks, in the forms of former NY Mayor, Mr. Rudy Giuliani, and current Wisconsin Governor, Mr. Scott Walker.  The former embracing fear, and the latter endorsing ignorance.

American exceptionalism, like many things politic, is subject to a duality:  On one side of the coin, we have the light, brilliance, and the promise/gift of our founding father’s legacy, the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution (these documents state that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are sacrosanct); the dark side or the flip side of that same American exceptionalism coin is the reality, or practice, that our founder’s promise and gift has been withheld from many folks, who are not “lily white,” wealthy, or part of America’s aristocracy.

The dark side of American exceptionalism (the betrayal of the American dream for many persons of color) has been used to justify all manner of atrocities:  from slavery, which was with us from the nation’s founding through the civil war; to manifest destiny, which was the doctrine of nationalist expansion, and racial purity – made manifest in Native-American subjugation and slaughter (Some have even argued that Germany’s National Socialist, or Nazi Party, gained it’s expansionist aims and racial purity laws directly from America’s policy of manifest destiny.  In Germany this policy was called: Lebensraum ).  The dark side of American exceptionalism includes 150-plus years of Jim Crow, the vestiges of which are with us to this very day, in our overcrowded jails, prisons and the criminal justice industrial complex.  U.S. exceptionalism took our founder’s benign mercantilist and agrarian economy and perverted them – in the name of untrammeled greed -  into monstrosities like:  The Wall Street banking cartel, which in 2008, nearly destroyed the American economy; monopolies and cartels, like Booze Allen, which runs the ubiquitous and uber-powerful spy network, The N.S.A.; Archer Daniels Midland and Monsanto, who hold incredible sway over the nation’s food supply and who have crushed the Jeffersonian dream; and of course, a bellicose and belligerent foreign policy, represented by the military industrial complex and the private contractors, who own, operate, and make up same.

For the last 35 years, the GOP has turned President Kennedy’s pledge on its head, from:  “… we shall pay any price, bear any burden, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty,” and converted it to:

… we shall pay any price, bear any burden, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of multi-national and commercial profits, globally.

This is the version of American exceptionalism that Mr. Giuliani recently defended, when he accused President Obama of not loving present day, America.  (To be sure, not all of America’s historical atrocities can be laid at the GOP's doorstep, but unfortunately, the Republican Party has become the standard barrier of many this nation’s past, explicit and tacit, racial and racist policies, from Nixon’s Southern Strategy to Mr. Romney’s comments on the parasitic 47%.)

Mr. Giuliani's America is perennially at war with the world, with the goal of unlimited commercial conquest.  Mr. Giuliani’s America is far, far removed from our founding fathers' intent and promise: that all men are created equal.  We get the following quotes from Mr. Giuliani from the Washington Post:

“He (President Obama) doesn’t love you.  And he doesn’t love me.  He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up though love of this country.”

“… with all the flaws we’re the most exceptional country in the world.  I’m looking for a presidential candidate who can express that, do that and carry it out.”

“And if that’s you Scott (Walker), I’ll endorse you.”

“(Obama) sees our weakness as footnotes to the great things we’ve done.”

“I’m not sure how wrong the (Christian) crusades were.”

Then last week, Giuliani compared Obama to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying “that is a patriot, that’s a man who loves his people, that’s a man who protects his people, that’s a man who fights for his people, unlike our President.”

Unfortunately, for Mr. Giuliani and the neo-conmen, who make up the Republican Party, their time is very short.  They believe in a version of America that will be gone in the next twenty to thirty years, and not a moment too soon.  Demographic trends are such that the GOP will be forced to change, or they will simply vanish.   With the advent of Elizabeth’s Warren’s message of economic enfranchisement for all classes and economic pluralism, and Mr. Paul’s message of a less adventurist foreign policy, the GOP establishment is being threatened like never before.  Hence, lashing out like a wounded plutocrat…. Mr. Giuliani, undoubtedly, had the audacity to say what many Republicans have been thinking, and saying behind closed doors, for some time.  The GOP has had a good run for the last 35 years, but their policies have ruined this country.  President Reagan’s quip immediately comes to mind: “Ask yourself, are you better off today than you were four years ago?”  Now, apply the Reagan maxim to 35 years of Republican rule, which includes an ever shrinking middleclass, the off-shoring and globalization of labor markets, stagnating U.S. wages, war without end, and the answer is the GOP has taken a wrecking ball to everything that made this country great….all for personal enrichment.

 It’s only natural that The Party, and King Giuliani, and the people who benefited most from the dark side of American exceptionalism, cry out for its continuance.

Winston Churchill, his mother was American, once said: “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they have tried everything else.”

American exceptionalism is not Mr. Guiliani’s version of America; American exceptionalism is taking our founding father’s promise and advancing it up the field, so that it applies to all persons in this country, regardless of race, color, creed, faith, sex, sexual orientation, or age.  American exceptionalism is an evolutionary process, where we learn from past mistakes, and slay our demons: whether it be slavery and Jim Crow, or economically and politically enfranchising women.  The evolutionary process is slow, but it is steady (despite the GOP's best efforts to contain it); it is inexorable, and forever on the march.  We can see it in Apple CEO, Tim Cook speaking out for internet privacy rights.  We can see it in the national acceptance of LBGTQ rights; we see it in President Obama obtaining the highest office in the land, and in his rising poll numbers.  But we have, indeed, a long way to go.  America and Americans should settle for nothing less, than steady continuous progress for a more culturally, socially, politically and economically tolerant and just society.

Applying whitewash to the past is not the answer…. The greatness of America is in embracing our history, and the truth, and learning from past mistakes, so that the nation can continue to evolve, to better achieve our founder’s ideals for everyone.  While we can question our past, we should all celebrate the progress America has made and will continue to make, with or without the GOP.

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2015

The GOP’s Love Affair with the Nanny State!

The GOP’s Love Affair with the Nanny State!

 

“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”

- John F. Kennedy

 

“If those of us in positions of responsibility fail to do everything in our power to protect the right of privacy, we risk something far more valuable than money. We risk our way of life.”

- Tim Cook, Apple CEO

By J.M. Hamilton (2-14-15)

Nothing ticks off libertarians, or some on the political right, quite like the nanny state. The “nanny state” is best defined as the government infringing upon personal liberties to achieve, sometimes allegedly and speciously, some greater societal good. The goal of nanny state laws and programs, in a policy of preemption, may also be aimed at curtailing future pubic spending to remedy a known evil.

Perhaps no single politician better exemplifies the nanny state for Republicans, than former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who once attempted to enforce an ordinance governing NY city soft drink consumption. The logic was simple: soft drinks are bad for your health; citizens cannot be counted on to make prudent decisions in regards their health (as evidenced by a national obesity epidemic); fatty snacks and soft drinks cause taxpayers to spend inordinate sums of public money to fight obesity related illness, like diabetes, through Medicare and Medicaid; and therefore, the state will enforce high fructose corn syrup consumption limits, and assorted fizzy drink caps.

Mayor Bloomberg is a billionaire, a bit of a political chameleon (having registered as a Republican, Democrat, and an independent), and among his many endeavors owns and operates one of the finest news organizations in the country, Bloomberg Business and Bloomberg Surveillance, et al.

In the interest of full disclosure, I often thought over the years that Mr. Bloomberg might have made a fine U.S. President, but some of his actions and proposals made many do a double-take. His latest proposal, which he shared very recently at the Aspen Institute, is the idea that guns should be taken away from minorities. The logic again, centers around pubic health, to wit: guns are a public health hazard; minorities suffer disproportionately and immensely from gun violence; gun violence costs the taxpayer cash through maintenance of police forces, hospital visits, and the resulting funding of the criminal justice industrial complex; and therefore, there ought to be legislation, or hegemonic executive power, leaving minorities unarmed.

Allison Joyce/Getty Images

Taking Mr. Bloomberg’s proposal to its logical extreme: only one tenth of one percent of the population, the plutocracy, should be allowed to own guns, since the wretched masses can’t handle such an awesome responsibility. To be sure, don’t put me down as either a gun fanatic, or even a gun enthusiast, but perhaps the very well intentioned Mr. Bloomberg may have crossed the Rubicon, or jumped the shark, into a zone that some might label “racist.” (I am certainly not calling the former Mayor racist, but some might say his proposal borders upon it.)  Perhaps the Mayor would be better served had he stuck to baby steps, such as a universal ban on all assault rifles and semi-automatics (regardless of race, religious or political affiliation, class or socio-economic status, etc.).

But I digress, because Mayor Bloomberg is not the point of this piece, he’s just a highly convenient example of the nanny state in action.

Like I said, the political right, in this country, often decries the immensity and power of federal and state governments (and in particular, its taxing authority), and its perceived infringement upon freedoms...except... well.... when it fits their agenda.

“Why J.M.H... what the hell are you talking about? Why everybody knows the Republican Party defines freedom and personal liberty, and wouldn’t dream of using the state to enforce its agenda.  Or subjugate through the law, and the power of the state, persons with various and alternative beliefs, skin tones, sexual preferences, or political affiliations, etc. Nor would the GOP use the taxing power of the state to redistribute wealth to GOP supporters, and Republican nanny/pet projects. Wake up, the GOP is equanimity defined.”

Really?

Let’s look at some examples of where the GOP uses the state, the nanny state (and its taxing authority), to enforce its agenda under specious claims of greater societal good.

1) The DoD. Ironic isn’t it? The GOP used to be the political party that heeded our founding father’s warnings, beware of foreign entanglements. Our political leadership used to have to drag this nation, kicking and screaming, into war. Today, the GOP is the first one to reach for the DoD, for any issue that arises globally. The fact that the GOP encourages the use of force for events that don’t concern this country and are not a threat to our national security, strikes me as shear madness. The simple solution for the GOP, the easy call, always: bombs away. Even after losing Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan... with the credibility and morale of our abused armed forces at low ebb, the GOP still believes the military is one stop shopping for all our foreign policy needs. The fact that the aforementioned wars were completely unnecessary (in fact, the resulting blowback is even more of a threat), appears to be a lesson the GOP, and yes, Dems, is unwilling to learn.

2) The Surveillance State (NSA, FBI, CIA, etc, etc.) Half the nation's discretionary federal spending goes to defense and surveillance; a great deal of that spending is off line, within black budgets, or classified, so who knows how much the U.S. really spends on offense and surveillance. And despite having our freedoms and civil liberties stripped from us daily, all in the name of greater personal safety, why has the world become more dangerous? George Orwell and Phillip K. Dick dreamed it up, and the GOP and the NSA adopted their vision, mixed in totalitarian Stasi tactics, and ran with it. Of course, I am writing of the police/surveillance state. With your every word listened to, with your every computer key stroke recorded... does it get any more “nanny” than this? And don’t forget, as taxpayers, we’re paying to have the state violate our civil liberties and freedoms. The bottom line: the U.S. could defend this nation for a lot less than we are presently paying, but the cost to defend the plutocracy’s global commercial empire is very expensive, and the plutocracy is unwilling to pay.  That means you foot the bill.

3) The GOP, with a nod to faux Christian values, loves to legislate morality. That Christ admonished us not to judge others, and to love our neighbors as ourselves, seems completely lost on the GOP and the Religious right. Christ must be quite upset because over the years, the religion he founded has been used to rationalize all sorts of bigotry and hatred, whether it be Jim Crow, persecution of homosexuals and alternative faiths, or infringing upon women’s health and reproductive rights. The simple solution for the GOP, and the religious right is on full display: if you find a behavior, belief, or practice that is unacceptable to your version of "Christian morality" (say homosexuality or abortion), than don’t engage in it. Last I checked Christians are no longer being fed to the lions; quite the contrary, they are more likely to be dictating GOP social policy (not unlike the Taliban in Afghanistan).

4) The War on Drugs. Inaugurated by Richard Nixon, the War on Drugs is over 40 years old and an absolute failure. More advanced countries have legalized drug consumption, long thought to be illicit in this country, and afford treatment - instead of jail time - to addicts. That drug consumption often tapers off, once the product is made legal doesn’t fit into the nanny state narrative; that more people die from tobacco and alcohol annually than all the illegal drugs combined appears lost upon supporters of this forty-plus year old war; that one of the most powerful opponents of Florida’s recent marijuana legalization effort was a Republican casino magnate and billionaire, who peddles all sorts of addiction(s) within his facilities, should surprise no one. This particular issue accomplishes so many of the GOP’s nanny state goals: the war on drugs feeds the MIC and the Surveillance State; it supports the demagogues of a false Christian morality; and further buttresses the next GOP nanny state favorite....

5) The Criminal Justice Industrial Complex (CJIC). For the last thirty-five years, nothing quite excites the GOP and their supporters, like law and order issues, capital punishment, and swift and often aborted justice. That this drive has been perverted to lock up minorities in disproportionate numbers, take away their voting rights, and that the U.S. locks up a higher proportion of its citizens than any other Western democracy....seems to suggest that the GOP’s true CJIC nanny state goal is Jim Crow maintenance and support.

Bit awkward isn’t it? The GOP despises big government liberals, public works projects, run-away government handouts, and a bloated “borrow/tax and spend” government that has run completely off the rails. But their shouts of derision ring hollow, when we find that Republicans have completely fallen in love with the nanny state.

Makes Senator Rand Paul look pretty damn moderate, among GOP candidates, doesn’t it?  Mr. Paul has taken some hits recently, (some of it justified), but he looks positively sane, compared to the field of GOP POTUS candidates.  (I'm always amazed: 
An insane Caucasian can walk into a Connecticut elementary school and kills two-dozen children and teachers, and the nation shrugs.  An all too common occurrence. But one Arab cuts off the head of one U.S. journalist in Syria, and the entire GOP establishment wants to bring the full weight of the U.S. armed forces down upon a nation that is no more a national security threat to the continental U.S. than the State of Alaska.  The GOP is essentially doing the terrorist bidding, by bankrupting the nation in another useless war.)

Separately, and on a combined basis, these nanny state policies present a threat to human dignity, life, liberty, and the fiscal health of our nation (and arguably, our national security). Hitting a particularly singular issue that the GOP holds dear: the Republican party’s nanny state robs citizens and taxpayers of their personal property, and hard earned income to support their failed policies. Worse still, the nation is in hock over the GOP‘s nanny state.

And what’s the common thread that runs through all these GOP pet institutions? It’s simple really.  Whether it be the DoD, the war on drugs, or the criminal justice industrial complex, the common denominator is this: much of these government operations have been privatized and are now profited from. Which basically, means it will be nearly impossible - no matter how wrong, insidious or wasteful - to shut these government programs down.

You think its hard to roll back government? Subcontract out a government function to a private contractor, and no matter how morally repugnant or wasteful, that government function becomes “indispensable.”

You see, the GOP hates big government, except when its pals are profiting from it, and kicking back campaign contributions their way.

To be sure the Dems are not exactly innocent in their backing of many of the aforementioned institutions; but there appears to be a key dichotomy, between the nanny state policies of the two respective political parties. The GOP views the nanny state as something to profit from, while the Dems take a more humanist tact, and view the nanny state as something to help their fellow citizens by, to the level the playing field by, and to lend a hand up.

The GOP hates Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, and Romneycare, which have become the foundation of our Capitalist system... for these very institutions keep the pitchforks and the revolution at bay.

P.S.

Put down the remote.  Drop the video game… stop staring at your cell phone, because the world has a far more interesting story.  This story has everything:  economics, politics, greed, avarice, intrigue, nation state feuds, banksters, a currency on the brink, radicals, revolutionaries, and the elite and reactionaries.   And, ultimately, it’s a love story.

All eyes on Greece!

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2015

The time and place for nation building is now, and right here at home, in America.

NO MORE AFGHANISTANS

Those who do not learn from history will not survive!  Afghanistan: The very definition of "insanity."

By J.M. Hamilton (Originally Published 7-31-2010)

This week’s editorial was going to address our soaring debt to GDP ratios and the political party that is largely responsible, the Republicans; but there is much time, an ever growing cascade of bad news to exploit in that endeavor, and the political season in on the horizon, so we’ll save that gem for later.

 

Instead, we depart from economic matters and discuss something very close to my heart: foreign policy and in particular, the war in Afghanistan.  It appears that things are not going so well in Afghanistan, not as well anyway, as we had been led to believe.  In fact, if we compare this war with another war without end that the U.S. was engaged in forty to fifty years ago, the parallels are remarkably similar, almost frightening.  And while the outcome of the Afghanistan war is not preordained, we can almost predict the outcome, if the prior war is any example:  a mighty superpower proclaiming victory but severely humbled, walking off the world stage, and learning, hopefully (for a generation anyway), the limits of military power.  For war, as Mr. Clausewitz has told us, is an extension of politics, and therefore, war is not a means to an end.  It is but a tool in our political arsenal.

The problem with our present war, like the war the U.S. was engaged in some forty years ago, is that the U.S. is using conventional forces to fight a guerilla insurgency.   Like the war in Indochina, the benefactor of the insurgency against the U.S. is a nuclear power(s); and while the indigenous populations in both wars disliked the guerilla forces, they grew to have an even greater disdain for U.S. military operations over time.  This week saw the release of a substantial body of secret military information in the form of the Wikileaks documents, illustrating that the American people have been deceived about the realities of the Afghan war.  And like the papers released this week, the New York Times published similar documents in the form of the “Pentagon Papers” in 1971, revealing the same information about that war.  Meanwhile, the American people’s appetite for the war in Afghanistan is eroding over time, and patience is wearing thin as the body count grows.  

History repeats.

In both wars military and political goals have been nebulous and changing over time.   Towards the end of the earlier war, President Nixon set the goal of “vietnamization,” so that South Vietnam would learn to care for and defend itself.  Sound familiar?  Nixon also set time tables for troop withdrawals, as has our current President.  For entirely different reasons, both wars led its respective military commanders to go home in shame and defeat: Westmoreland and McChrystal.   What the U.S. came to find out at the end of the Vietnam War was that the world went on for America; the enemy did not take over the world, and in fact collapsed upon itself over time, in the form of the Soviet Union.  In a similar fashion, if America pulled out of Afghanistan tomorrow, would America crumble and implode?   Probably quite the opposite.

So who do we turn to then for some expert guidance on our present predicament?  Well that would be none other than the master statesman himself, the sly one, Richard M. Nixon.  Hold on, hold on, before you shut down your computer or toggle onto the next site, hear me out.   Mr. Nixon, despite personal failings, was a brilliant foreign policy expert.  Some would say President Nixon was deeply paranoid, but you’d be paranoid too, if the Kennedy clan stole your 1960 presidential bid.   Besides, given the economic events that have unfolded in the U.S. and world economy over the last five years, what is paranoid?  Not even your worst nightmares can compare to this Kafkaesque economic dreamscape America presently exists in, brought to us all by the fine folks at Goldman Sachs, the FED, the U.S. Treasury, and AIG, Et Al.  But I digress.

Back to the man, the war, and the lessons not learned.   Upon leaving the White House under less than auspicious circumstances, Mr. Nixon set about cleaning up his image and he wrote several books.  Quite possibly one of the more obscure books Mr. Nixon wrote was called:  No More Vietnams.  And within it, Mr. Nixon laid down some very salient advice and counsel in conducting U.S. foreign policy, and in particular, the manner in which the U.S. military is to be utilized to further America’s political aims and goals.  Let’s cut to the chase, shall we.  

Former President Nixon wrote, and I paraphrase:

1)      Wars must only be engaged in with the support of the American people and the Congress of the United States.
2)      Military force should only be utilized as a last resort, and it must be used sparingly.
3)      The President must be highly selective in the use of force.
4)      Military goals and objectives should be clearly defined and achievable, and the objectives vital to our national interest.
5)      There should be only one overriding goal for the U.S. military and that is:  Absolute Victory!

Funny, Mr. Nixon didn’t place “nation building” on the list, which apparently was one of Mr. Bush’s goals, or came to be one of his goals over time, in Afghanistan.  To hear Mr. Holbrook (special ambassador to Afghanistan and Pakistan) state it:  the Bush administration’s "mission statement" for Afghanistan had been much more ambitious than the goal set by the Obama White House.

 

"It was creating a modern state, a modern democracy in Afghanistan with limited resources," Holbrooke said of President George W. Bush’s goals.

Sounds like nation building then, shouldn’t be the job of a single nation, or the U.S. military for that matter, but rather the duty of an international body, with International support and funding.

The bottom line is politicians do the U.S. military, and the United States overall, a tremendous disservice when we assign irrational goals and objectives to the men and women in uniform.   The first President Bush (H.W.) recognized all of President’s Nixon’s objectives, laid out above, in the first Gulf War.  In the first Gulf War it was:  Veni, vidi, vici !!!   And then you pull the military out, and let the politicians and diplomats set the parameters, hopefully, of a lasting, or at least well monitored, peace.

Based upon our lessons in Vietnam and with” vietnamization,” our activities in Afghanistan appear irrational, and nearly meet the definition of insanity.   And this is meant as no insult to the Afghan people, but attempting to turn people – with a rudimentary culture, education (if any) and economy – into democrats, overnight, would appear to meet that definition.   The U.S. military, the most effective military the world has ever seen, could spend four decades in Afghanistan and might never achieve the Bush mission statement.  Mr. Bush then, maybe with the best of intentions, set up our troops to fail with his goal of nation building; the former president might as well as told the U.S. military to capture and defeat the wind.

As for vital U.S. interests, the military goal was clear after 9-11, and the U.S. military achieved that goal in a matter of weeks, when Osama Bin Ladin was last seen running from Tora Bora and heading into Pakistan.  Done.  From that point on, the U.S. should have held its so-called ally, Pakistan, personally responsible for any and all terrorist activities against the U.S. or its citizens.  Because, as the leaks revealed this week, and as we all have known for some time, Pakistan plays a large role in providing safe haven, intelligence, support, and initiating the actions of destabilizing/terrorist forces in the region.  The problematic forces all receive support inside Pakistan, within the state of Warizstan.

In 1985, Mr. Nixon, a man ahead of his time, said it best:  “Terrorism today is an international challenge to an international order, and it requires an international response.”

Terrorism is not a war, in the conventional sense, but a cancer that has to be treated at multiple levels, on an on-going basis, within a society in turmoil:  politically, diplomatically, economically, spiritually, educationally, and culturally.   And yes, terrorism must be addressed when called upon, through the proxy arm of God herself, via U.S. military or NATO forces.  How do terrorist gain a foothold in a society(?), by responding to a vacuum, by providing the humanitarian and basic services that any decent government should be providing, to any group of people in a state of malaise or chaos.   Hamas in Gaza is a case study in point.

Based upon Mr. Nixon’s good guidance then, the U.S. military had already achieved victory in Afghanistan.  Nation building, and policing up the region, should be taken up by the U.N. and financed by the world.   Mr. Bush’s goal, in its present form, of building a modern democracy within Afghanistan is an abject failure, and a reflection on him, Dick Cheney, and his cohorts, the Republican Party.   The Second Bush administration, unlike his father before him, had no exit strategy in the region, and the same, probably, could be said of his administration’s goals and aims in Iraq.  (By the way, this dichotomy, Nixon/Elder Bush versus Cheney/Younger Bush, establishment Republican versus the Neo-cons, is the clearest example of what is wrong with the Republican Party today, and the reason why so many members have fled and independents are turned off.)

It goes without saying that the U.S. owes this man a debt, but Mr. Bush, in particular, as does the Republican Party, owes General Patraeus an everlasting debt of gratitude.   However, at a time of record federal debt, unemployment/underemployment in excess of 20% (per Shadow Government Statistics), the time and place for nation building is now, and right here at home, in America.  A long and sustained parting shot inside Waziristan by the U.S. Air Force, as the U.S. military pulls up tent stakes in Afghanistan, just might deliver the message that Pakistan needs.   And that is Pakistan will be held accountable for any and all terrorist activities within the region, or that initiate from its borders, globally. 

If Pakistan wants to play big boy politics with proxy forces and nukes, then they need to join the international order, and stop acting like some third world thug – dictatorship.  President Nixon was right, the last thing the U.S. needs is anymore Vietnams, but unfortunately, President Bush set the U.S. up with a beauty of a Vietnam within Afghanistan! 

 Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2015