Progressives (Liberals)

Wise up, you are being used and manipulated, and the individual and ingrained morality is being seriously marginalized .
https://personalliberty.com/the-sociopathic-establishment-wants-to-turn-good-guys-into-bad-guys/

As badly as I dislike Pelosi, I hope these guys don't succeed in their plan to replace her.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/whos-really-leading-the-democratic-rebellion-against-pelosi/

It’s impossible to understand the Democratic rebellion against Nancy Pelosi without understanding the way power works in the House of Representatives. To understand the self-serving men behind this rebellion, heed the words of the late screenwriter William Goldman: Follow the money.

There is discontent with Pelosi’s ideology on the left, and that’s understandable. But ideology is not driving this campaign, and this is no populist rebellion. In fact, its leaders have no discernible ideology at all.

That’s how corporate money rolls in the Democratic Party. It lays low, hides its true colors, and pretends it only wants to “get things done.”

The anti-Pelosi insurgency is not a movement. It’s a cabal, orchestrated by the appropriately hashtagged #FiveWhiteGuys, a group of self-self-interested players with big money behind them. These white males resemble nothing so much as the next-generation terminator played by Robert Patrick in “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.” They’re cunning, aggressive, shape-shifting, and so reflective that anyone who looks at them sees only a distorted image of themselves.


If you’re looking to change politics, they don’t reflect you.

Rebel Without a Cause

This ersatz rebellion’s most visible leader is Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, a custom-crafted biography in a suit who appears to hold no core beliefs. That’s undoubtedly a plus for the political operatives who recruited and promoted him. An early profile has Moulton variously calling himself “a progressive Democrat,” a “pragmatic Democrat,” and a “frustrated Democrat”—and that was just during his first primary.

Moulton was reportedly recruited to run for Congress by “New Politics,” a group that seeks to elect both Democratic and Republican veterans. It describes itself as “bipartisan,” a word will come up again in the story of the anti-Pelosi rebellion. New Politics’ other success story is Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, who notably blamed Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, rather than the ill-advised Iraq war, for the rise of ISIS.

Moulton, who reportedly backed that tragic misadventure, enjoyed the early support of two generals who helped lead it, David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal. (Unfortunately, both are now disgraced: McChrystal for disrespecting the civilian chain of command, and Petraeus for revealing secrets to an extramarital lover as he cheated on his wife, a crime that would have likely led to criminal indictment for a less well-connected official.)

As the Washington Post reports, Moulton “has aligned with Republicans on some policy bills, ranging from a ban on the gun accessories used in last year’s mass shooting in Las Vegas to a recent legislation allowing veterans to use medical marijuana.”

Moulton had praise for Pelosi when he was asked about her last year, saying she had achieved an “awful lot.” He told Politico’s Michael Kruse that he thought much of the Republican criticism of her was “unfair,” but added, “the reality is that we’re losing.”

Well, Pelosi’s winning now. What’s his rationale for opposing Pelosi today? “If that many seats change hands,” Moulton said after the election, “that’s just all the more reason the American people are calling out for change.”

Heads, he wins. Tails, Pelosi loses.

The FIRE Brigade

Moulton’s given to making hazy statements like: “Congress needs a new leader. Period.”

The only concrete thing about him appears to be the money he’s raised for like-minded candidates. “Thanks to a network of donors rooted in the financial centers of Boston and New York,” reports the Post, “Moulton’s Serve America PAC and related political committees raised a combined $8 million for the election cycle.”

Moulton has been well-rewarded for his ideological plasticity. During his short political career, Moulton has received a total of $1,723,870 from the investor class that comprises the so-called “FIRE” sector—financial, insurance, and real estate. He has also received more than $160,000 from Pharma. (These figures come from Open Secrets.)

Moulton isn’t the only member of the five-man anti-Pelosi band, of course. The rhythm section is composed of Colorado’s Ed Perlmutter, Oregon’s Kurt Schrader, and Bill Foster of Illinois. The three men have received $4,082,803, $987,050, and $2,747,969 respectively from the FIRE sector. Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio, who mounted a longshot challenge to Pelosi in 2016, is the band’s other leader—the Keith Richards, if you will, to Moulton’s would-be Jagger.

Ryan isn’t running this time around. Instead, Ryan recently insisted that there are “plenty of really competent females that we can replace her with.”

For sheer tone-deafness in gender relations, that phrase belongs with Mitt Romney’s 2012 comment about the “binders full of women” he hoped to appoint as president. It may be worse, in fact, since it suggests females can’t be assumed to be competent. The remark will have an added sting for Democratic women who remember Ryan’s past positions on reproductive rights.

Why does Ryan say Pelosi has to go? “We need a brand change,” Ryan told Rolling Stone. For content-free criticism, that’s about as empty—and as cringeworthy—as it gets.

No Labels, No Point

The rhetorical style of these Democratic “rebels”—vague on the issues, big on cliches and platitudes, the rhetorical equivalent of cotton candy—comes with a pedigree. It is the hallmark of “centrism,” the billionaire-funded political faction that serves its financial backers by selling themselves as “non-ideological,” “technocratic” architects of “bipartisan” consensus who can “break the gridlock” and “solve problems.”

For this crowd, “solving problems” always winds up meaning the same thing: cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and an unwarranted obsession with the federal deficit that always—just accidentally, mind you!—winds up helping corporations and the billionaire class.

The “centrist” political style claims to be “above parties and partisanship”—which, in the end, is another way of saying it’s free of any principles except the interests of its paymasters. It often comes in the guise of patriotism, as when Seth Moulton says he places “country over party”—a comment that, implicitly, is a deep insult to those who believe one party’s proposals would serve the country better than the other’s.

The anti-Pelosi campaign is being supported by one of the mainstays of the corporate centrist world—the cynical political ploy known as “No Labels,” which I wrote about in 2012, and its creation, the “Problem Solvers Caucus.” If you called “No Labels” a guaranteed-employment plan for Republican and Democratic political hacks, you would not be wrong.

Besides, the Problem Solvers Caucus—which, predictably, promised to “break the gridlock” and get things done—hasn’t solved any problems. Given their agenda, that’s a good thing—but it’s hardly a mandate to lead.

It’s Not About the Speakership—It’s About Blocking Progressive Change

The No Labels crowd is throwing its public influence (negligible) and its ability to muster campaign cash (considerable) behind the anti-Pelosi effort for a reason: they see this as an opportunity to weaken the Democrats’ newfound power in the House. That’s especially urgent for the big-money crowd at a time when nearly half of successful new candidates ran on Medicare for All and more than 100 House Democrats have joined the Expand Social Security Caucus.

The “centrist” campaign may help explain why Pelosi plans to impose a new rule making it harder to raise middle-class taxes. This rule would make it harder to achieve either Medicare for All or expanded Social Security, even though any new taxes would leave the working class much better off financially than it is today.

Rep. Tom Reed, a Republican member of the Problem Solvers Caucus, has already indicated he could back Pelosi if more such changes were put in place. The caucus’ additional proposed changes, roughly outlined here, would effectively give Republicans veto power over progressive legislation.

It is noteworthy that there was no serious attempt to implement these rules when Republicans ran the House.

Even more than the speakership, this procedural power grab motivates the anti-Pelosi crowd and its backers. They might even withdraw their opposition to her if they could seize this power for themselves and their “centrist” allies in both parties.

No wonder these “rebels” are vague about their goals. Given the massive support for Medicare for All (more than 70 percent of the public, 85 percent of Democrats) and expanding Social Security, they know their agenda is extremely unpopular. If they truly believed in “country over party,” they would support programs that most of the country wants and needs.

How Power Works

Here’s how power really works in the House of Representatives. The Speaker holds enormous power, but only serves at the pleasure of her caucus. The representatives in that caucus are not her employees; they are her constituents. Anyone who wants to become Speaker has to win their support.

One very effective way to do that is by raising money, as Pelosi has prodigiously done. Another is by managing the House, and the caucus, effectively enough to rack up a list of accomplishments that will help those representatives win reelection.

Here’s something else worth knowing about Democratic power in the House: Its party organizations are still deeply hierarchical, and are built on deeply embedded relationships. If the Moulton/Ryan gang succeeds in unseating Pelosi, the speakership will not go to someone the left supports. Sure, it would be great to see Barbara Lee become Speaker, but that simply isn’t going to happen. Besides, she’s not even running. (Lee is running for the House’s number five position.)

The Five Guys (not to be confused with the burger chain of the same name) and their backers are almost certainly looking for one of two outcomes: either Pelosi accedes to their demands, which will paralyze the Democratic agenda, or Pelosi is replaced with someone who will. But if Pelosi goes down, that replacement will probably not be Rep. Marcia Fudge, despite her public expressions of interest (as of this writing) and Moulton’s professed support for her.

The Five Guys may block Pelosi, but they will not choose her successor. Instead, in the chaos that would follow a Pelosi defeat, the speakership will probably go to the second-highest member of the Democratic hierarchy: Steny Hoyer.

End Game

The left is distressed with Pelosi, and that’s understandable. Pelosi’s commitment to “pay as you go” funding is a political and procedural mistake of the first order. The new tax rule is, as MoveOn.org and others have said, “a staggeringly bad idea”—although that may have been forced on her by the Five Guys crowd. (Progressives should note, however, that this rule could be waived at any time to pass progressive programs.)

A Hoyer speakership would be a catastrophe for the left, for reasons Politico’s Bill Scher lays out here. Hoyer represents the worst of the corporate-backed, “centrist,” economically neoliberal party elite. His faction’s disastrous policies and muddled messaging led it into the political wilderness. With this election, the party has only begun to make up some of the ground lost under its rule.

Progressives should mobilize to defeat Hoyer and replace him, preferably someone who can serve as an heir apparent. And if the left wants a more progressive House Speaker, it needs to run candidates in more primaries. When House Democrats are more progressive, Pelosi or her successor will either change accordingly or be replaced.

Yes, Pelosi’s a big fundraiser. She reportedly raised $135.6 million for this election cycle. A cynic might say that this figure, when compared to Moulton’s $8 million, makes her about 17 times more likely to win this speakership fight.

Pelosi raises that money, from a variety of sources, because she plays to win in the current system. Nancy Pelosi can’t, and won’t, lead the fight to get money out of politics. But then, the Democratic left needs to stop waiting for politicians to fight their battles. That’s what movements are for.

This country needs a mass movement that will demand fundamental political change. But nobody needs the Five Guys’ corporate-backed chaos, or the reactionary regime it seeks to impose on the House of Representatives.

If some leftists don’t want Pelosi to win, that’s understandable. But they should hope with all their hearts that her opponents lose.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
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More Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Retweeted The New Yorker
All the challenges to Leader Pelosi are coming from her right, in an apparent effort to make the party even more conservative and bent toward corporate interests.

Hard pass. So long as Leader Pelosi remains the most progressive candidate for Speaker, she can count on my support.

Why do you dislike Pelosi?

I dislike nearly all establishment politicians. The result of their policies has lost us the programs that benefit the not wealthy. It began long ago, but has reached critical mass. Establishment politicians had the new deal and subsequent programs in their keeping and allowed them to slip away. Millions of people today are too young to remember having what people my age grew up with. Establishment politicians have allowed the military to squander trillions of dollars on endless wars, with no checks, and have helped countries like Saudi Arabia to commit atrocities. I read today that perhaps 85,000 children have starved to death in Yemen, aside from all the other kinds of death being suffered there. I despise nearly all of our establishment people.

I would hold the established politicians and clerics inside Saudi Arabia, and the establishment politicians and mullahs in Iran responsible.

Why isn't this the fault of the aggressors who have invaded Yemen and are using it as a platform to attack Saudi Arabia and the United States?

How are Saudi Arabia and the United States at fault for defending themselves from these aggressors and helping the legitimate Yemeni government to defend itself?

Nancy Pelosi's NOT SUBTLE Attempt to Kill Medicare For All Efforts

forge a vision that “reflects the needs of working Americans — centered on economic, political, social, racial and environmental justice.”


Bernie Sanders
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@BernieSanders
Congress should represent the needs of all the American people, not just the 1%. With a sense of urgency, Democrats must have the courage to take on powerful special interests & fight for a progressive agenda that addresses the needs of working families. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/democrats-need-a-bold-agenda-heres-what-they-should-do-in-the-first-100-days-of-congress/2018/11/21/dc80ddd6-ed07-11e8-96d4-0d23f2aaad09_story.html …

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Opinion | Democrats need a bold agenda. Here’s what they should do in the first 100 days of...
It is about time that we had an economy and a government that works for all of us.

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While celebrating the “Blue Wave” in the midterms that saw Democrats reclaim control of the U.S. House and acheive major wins in state houses and governors’ mansions nationwide, Sanders writes that while it is clear a majority of the American people “rejected President Trump’s agenda benefiting the wealthy and the powerful, as well as his racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and religious bigotry,” it simply “is not good enough for Democrats to just be the anti-Trump party.”

If Democrats, he writes, “want to keep and expand their majority in the House, take back the Senate and win the White House, Democrats must show the American people that they will aggressively stand up and fight for the working families of this country — black, white, Latino, Asian American or Native American, men and women, gay or straight. This means addressing the crisis of a broken criminal-justice system and reforming inhumane immigration policies. But it also means fighting to expand a middle class that has been disappearing for more than 40 years, reducing inequality in both income and wealth — which has disproportionately hurt African Americans and Hispanics — and aggressively combating climate change, the most urgent threat facing our planet.”

Specifically, argues Sanders, the new Democratic majority in the House should spend its first 100 days next year passing an unmistakably bold legislative agenda that includes:

Increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour and indexing it to median wage growth thereafter. The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is a starvation wage that must be increased to a living wage — at least $15 an hour. This would give more than 40 million Americans a raise and would generate more than $100 billion in higher wages throughout the country.

A path toward Medicare-for-all. The Medicare-for-all bill widely supported in the Senate has a four-year phase-in period on the way to guaranteeing health care for every man, woman and child. Over the first year, it would lower the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 55, cover dental, hearing and vision care for seniors, provide health care to every young person in the United States and lower the cost of prescription drugs.

Bold action to combat climate change. The report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has made it clear we have just 12 years to substantially cut the amount of carbon in our atmosphere, or our planet will suffer irreversible damage. Congress must pass legislation that shifts our energy system away from fossil fuels and toward energy efficiency and renewable energy. We can lead the planet in combating climate change and, in the process, create millions of good paying jobs.

Fixing our broken criminal-justice system. We must end the absurdity of the United States having more people in jail than any other country on Earth. We must invest in jobs and education for our young people, not more jails and incarceration.

Comprehensive immigration reform. The American people want to protect the young people in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and to move toward comprehensive immigration reform for the more than 11 million people in our country who are undocumented. And that’s exactly what we should do.

Progressive tax reform. At a time of massive and growing inequality in both income and wealth, Congress must pass legislation which requires wealthy people and large corporations to begin paying their fair share of taxes. It is unacceptable that there are large, extremely profitable corporations in this country that do not pay a nickel in federal income taxes.

A $1 trillion infrastructure plan. Every day, Americans drive to work on potholed roads and crumbling bridges, and ride in overcrowded buses and subways. Children struggle to concentrate in overcrowded classrooms. Workers are unable to find affordable housing. The structures that most Americans don’t see are also in disrepair — from spotty broadband and an outdated electric grid, to toxic drinking water and dilapidated levees and dams. Congress should pass a $1 trillion infrastructure plan to address these needs while creating up to 15 million good-paying jobs in the process.

Lowering the price of prescription drugs. Americans pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs because, unlike other countries, the United States doesn’t directly regulate the price of medicine. The House should pass legislation to require Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices and allow patients, pharmacists and wholesalers to purchase low-cost prescription drugs from Canada and other countries. It should also pass legislation to make sure that Americans don’t pay more for prescription drugs than citizens do in other major countries.

Making public colleges and universities tuition-free and substantially reducing student debt. In a highly competitive global economy, we must have the best-educated workers in the world. Every young person in America, regardless of income, must have the opportunity to receive the education they need to get a decent job and make it into the middle class. The House should pass the College for All Act to make public colleges and universities tuition-free and substantially reduce student debt.

Expanding Social Security. When 1 out of 5 seniors is trying to get by on less than $13,500 a year, we must expand Social Security so that every American can retire with dignity and security. The House should pass legislation to expand Social Security benefits and extend its solvency for the next 60 years by requiring that the wealthiest Americans — those making more than $250,000 a year — pay their fair share of Social Security taxes.

The Thanksgiving op-ed from Sanders comes a week before the independent senator will deliver the keynote address at a “gathering” of national and international progressive leaders in his home state of Vermont.

The event, coordinated by The Sanders Institute, founded by Jane Sanders, “will convene 250 leading progressive minds to envision – and to actualize – a better future for our country and the world. Reaching across generations and embracing the inherent synergies across the progressive platform, participants will discuss and debate our nation’s most pressing issues and offer innovative solutions.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
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9 Dems are choosing to hold the entire 220+ caucus hostage if we don’t accept their GOP-friendly rules that will hamstring healthcare efforts from the get-go.

People sent us here to get things done, not “negotiate” with an admin that jails children and guts people’s healthcare.Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez added,
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Democratic members of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus are warning Nancy Pelosi she won't win their votes for speaker if she doesn’t back their proposals
https://politi.co/2R3WrYN

Pelosi and Dems played voters for chumps — again
BY JONATHAN TURLEY, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 11/19/18

When I was in grade school in Chicago, I ran home excitedly one day after making the deal of my life.

It was 1969, the Cubs were still in first place in the division, and I snared a seat behind the Cubs dugout for Sunday’s game against the Mets for just $1 from a fellow student. My father looked at the ticket, which clearly was handmade, and explained delicately that I had been taken. There was not even a game to be played that Sunday at Wrigley.

He suggested, however, that I keep the ticket as a reminder of one of life’s greatest lessons: Don’t be a chump.

In the aftermath of the midterm elections, millions of voters are about to discover the same thing: We’ve become a nation of chumps, and both parties just sold us $1 premium seats to a game that will not be held.

What is fascinating — even inspiring — about American elections is that the two parties that make up our duopoly of power score every two years on the same scam, with the same chumps. Politicians constantly convince citizens to vote against the other party, as opposed to making a positive case for their own reelections; polls show citizens despise both parties’ establishments and hate our rigged political system.

Both parties again ran the blue state/red state scam in which voters are convinced to choose the lesser of two unchanging evils. It is designed to prevent the rise of a credible third party, allowing the two parties to regularly trade off control between their respective leaderships.

The election is over, and Washington is about to return to the status quo. The Senate has re-elected the same leaders. Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — who many members kept at arm’s length during the campaign — walked into a closed-door caucus and reportedly received a standing ovation.

Right on cue, reports indicate that even new members who campaigned against Pelosi are joining the rest of the Democratic members in assuring their support on the floor, as opposed to a symbolic caucus vote. Even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who called for a “generation of new people” in Congress, now appears to support her.

The key to running a scam is to use a mark’s greed, weakness or anger to blind him to an obvious swindle. In our age of rage, we were all marks in this election and got played beautifully.

Pelosi has long been one of the most unpopular U.S. politicians. Before the election — with many races viewed as being within 1 or 2 percentage points — voters listed Pelosi as one of their reasons for voting against Democrats. Polls indicate that roughly 7 percent of voters said Pelosi was one of the two top reasons for their voting — almost exclusively against the Democrats.

It is not clear how many seats might have flipped if Pelosi had pledged that new leadership would take over the party if Democrats prevailed in the House. Even if only 2 percent of voters had been impacted, it could have been enough to change the outcomes of a number of key races. Yet, Pelosi put herself before her party’s interests.

Of course, the first step in a confidence game is the “convincer” promising a big pay-off. In this case, it was the impeachment of Donald Trump, a pledge now being brushed to the side by Democrats as (to quote Democratic District of Columbia Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton) “a thankless, useless waste of energy” amid assurances that this would be a new Democratic Party, including opposition to Pelosi.

Voters were fed assurances that the many new members would insist on new leadership. Those pledges would seem easy to fulfill, with post-election polls showing that 56 percent of Democrats oppose Pelosi as Speaker. When Republican and independent voters are factored in, Pelosi may be the least popular candidate for Speaker in history.

So why are Democrats again pushing her to be the face of their party leading to the 2020 election? Because these elections are about them — certainly not about the marks who vote. Pelosi will deliver committee positions, campaign money and other benefits that some new leadership is unlikely to guarantee. She has spent months directing millions toward these members. Voters simply give them votes; Pelosi gives them cold-hard cash and other perks.

Given polls showing Pelosi at less than 40 percent popularity, she and the Democratic establishment are redefining the election, and not for the first time. Leading up to the 2016 election, every poll showed that voters were looking for non-establishment candidates and that Hillary Clinton remained one of the least popular establishment candidates ever to run for the presidency. Yet, Democratic leaders rigged the primaries for Clinton — and lost to the most unpopular Republican presidential candidate ever.

Given Pelosi’s support for Clinton and the huge losses in the prior election when Pelosi was Speaker, many again called for her to step aside. However, Pelosi declared that voters really did not want change and that she would remain as the party’s face. It was that easy. After the most anti-establishment election in U.S. history, Pelosi declared that voters wanted her and the establishment to stay in power.

Now, Pelosi and Democratic leaders are saying that polls showing overwhelming opposition to her are uniformly wrong. She told CNN that she has “a broad base of support in the country” and voters want her as Speaker because she’s a woman. She described her opposition as being sexist, a betrayal of voters who wanted a “pink wave.” When asked about a letter with 17 members pledging to oppose her, Pelosi told reporters that "You'd have to ask those people what their motivation is. I think of the 17, it's mostly, like, 14 men who are on that letter." She added that “any misogyny involved in it, it's their problem, not mine." That’s not Trump but fellow Democrats who Pelosi charges as being misogynistic. Identity politics, it seems, is like the god Saturn: It devours its young.

Even though recent polls show only 39 percent of Democratic voters support Pelosi’s return, she is likely to prevail in a vote later this month.

So the establishment will continue in both parties, despite overwhelming unpopularity. And, just like the Cubs ticket, there never was a game to be played.

Usually it is tough to play a mark twice on the same scam; when a mark opens an envelope to find a wad of paper instead of cash, it leaves an indelible mark. American voters, however, fall for the same scam over and over. It is really not that the two parties are that good at it — it is us.

That standing ovation for Pelosi was well earned. Any flimflam artist can take a mark, but it takes a real genius to fool the same chumps twice.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.

As I see it, liberals have not won enough key elections as yet. If we can't build on 2018 and make the breakthrough in 2020, I have serious doubt the republic can be restored.

Since you use the term "restored", I take it that you know of a time that you think the Republic was healthy? Or are you just referring to any time pre-45?

I actually mean the time our focus was on building a safety net, keeping infrastructure up, expanding voting rights, taxing the rich - stuff like that. Civil rights laws were being passed. Medicine was more affordable. A family could live on one income. It wasn't the best it could be, but the potential was in play. There were negatives. We had McCarthyism, Vietnam, civil rights murders - more. But the politicians these days are giving it up to the rich and playing the people for suckers.

Trump’s Amoral Saudi Statement Is a Pure Expression of Decades-Old “U.S. Values” and Foreign Policy Orthodoxies

https://theintercept.com/2018/11/21/trumps-amoral-saudi-statement-is-a-pure-and-honest-expression-of-decades-old-u-s-values-and-foreign-policy-orthodoxies/

DONALD TRUMP ON TUESDAY issued a statement proclaiming that, notwithstanding the anger toward the Saudi Crown Prince over the gruesome murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, “the United States intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia to ensure the interests of our country, Israel and all other partners in the region.” To justify his decision, Trump cited the fact that “Saudi Arabia is the largest oil producing nation in the world” and claimed that “of the $450 billion [the Saudis plan to spend with U.S. companies], $110 billion will be spent on the purchase of military equipment from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and many other great U.S. defense contractors.”

This statement instantly and predictably produced pompous denunciations pretending that Trump’s posture was a deviation from, a grievous violation of, long-standing U.S. values and foreign policy rather than what it actually and obviously is: a perfect example – perhaps stated a little more bluntly and candidly than usual – of how the U.S. has conducted itself in the world since at least the end of World War II.

The reaction was so intense because the fairy tale about the U.S. standing up for freedom and human rights in the world is one of the most pervasive and powerful prongs of western propaganda, the one relied upon by U.S. political and media elites to convince not just the U.S. population but also themselves of their own righteousness, even as they spend decades lavishing the world’s worst tyrants and despots with weapons, money, intelligence and diplomatic protection to carry out atrocities of historic proportions.

After all, if you have worked in high-level foreign policy positions in Washington, or at the think thanks and academic institutions that support those policies, or in the corporate media outlets that venerate those who rise to the top of those precincts (and which increasingly hire those security state officials as news analysts), how do you justify to yourself that you’re still a good person even though you arm, prop up, empower and enable the world’s worst monsters, genocides, and tyrannies?

Simple: by pretending that you don’t do any of that, that such acts are contrary to your system of values, that you actually work to oppose rather than protect such atrocities, that you’re a warrior and crusader for democracy, freedom and human rights around the world.

That’s the lie that you have to tell yourself: so that you can look in the mirror without instantly feeling revulsion, so that you can show your face in decent society without suffering the scorn and ostracization that your actions merit, so that you can convince the population over which you have ruled that the bombs you drop and the weapons with which you flood the world are actually designed to help and protect people rather than slaughter and oppress them.

That’s why it was so necessary – to the point of being more like a physical reflex than a conscious choice – to react to Trump’s Saudi statement with contrived anger and shock rather than admitting the truth that he was just candidly acknowledging the core tenets of U.S. foreign policy for decades. The people who lied to the public and to themselves by pretending that Trump did something aberrational rather than completely normal were engaged in an act of self-preservation as much as propagandistic deceit, though both motives were heavily at play.

The New York Times Editorial Page, as it so often does, topped the charts with pretentious, scripted moral outrage. “President Trump confirmed the harshest caricatures drawn by America’s most cynical critics on Tuesday when he portrayed its central objectives in the world as panting after money and narrow self-interest,” bellowed the paper, as though this view of U.S. motives is some sort of jaded fiction invented by America-haters rather than the only honest, rational description of the country’s despot-embracing posture in the world during the lifespan of any human being alive today.

The paper’s editorial writers were particularly shocked that “the statement reflected Mr. Trump’s view that all relationships are transactional, and that moral or human rights considerations must be sacrificed to a primitive understanding of American national interests.” To believe – or pretend to believe – that it is Mr. Trump who pioneered the view that the U.S. is willing and eager to sanction murder and savagery by the regimes with which it is most closely aligned as long as such barbarism serves U.S interests signifies a historical ignorance and/or a willingness to lie to one’s own readers so profound that no human language is capable of expressing the depths of those delusions. Has the New York Times Editorial Page ever heard of Henry Kissinger?

SO EXTENSIVE is the active, constant and enthusiastic support by the U.S. for the world’s worst monsters and atrocities that comprehensively citing them all, in order to prove the ahistorical deceit of yesterday’s reaction to Trump’s statement, would require a multi-volume book, not a mere article. But the examples are so vivid and clear that citing just a few will suffice to make the point indisputable.

In April of this year, Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt, the dictator of Guatemala during the 1980s, died. The New York Times obituary, noting that he had been convicted of genocide for “trying to exterminate the Ixil ethnic group, a Mayan Indian community whose villages were wiped out by his forces,” explained that “in the panoply of commanders who turned much of Central America into a killing field in the 1980s, General Ríos Montt was one of the most murderous.” The obituary added: “In his first five months in power, according to Amnesty International, soldiers killed more than 10,000 peasants.”

The genocide-committing General Rios Montt was a favorite of President Ronald Reagan, one of the closest figures the U.S. has to a secular saint, after whom many monuments and national institutions are still named. Reagan not only armed and funded Rios Montt but heaped praise on him far more gushing than anything Trump or Jared Kushner has said about the Saudi Crown Prince. The Washington Post’s Lou Cannon reported in 1982 that “on Air Force One returning to Andrews Air Force Base [from South America], [Reagan] said Rios Montt had been getting ‘a bum rap’ and ‘is totally dedicated to democracy in Guatemala.'”

At a press conference standing next to the mass murderer, Reagan hailed him as “a man of great personal integrity and commitment,” who really “wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice.” What about all those unfortunate acts of mass slaughter against Guatemalan peasants? That, said President Reagan, was justified, or at least understandable, because the General was “faced with a challenge from guerrillas armed and supported from those outside Guatemala.”

Trump’s emphasis yesterday on the Saudis’ value in opposing Iran provoked particular anger. That anger is extremely odd given that the iconic and notorious photograph of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein took place in 1983, when Rumsfeld was dispatched to Baghdad to provide arms and other weapons to the Iraqi regime in order to help them fight Iran.

This trip, Al Jazeera noted when the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, all happened while “Iraq was at war with Iran and was using chemical weapons. Human rights abuses were practised on large sections of the Iraqi population.” The U.S. nonetheless “renewed the hand of friendship [with Saddam] through the special envoy Rumsfeld” because “Washington wanted Iraq’s friendship to stymie Iran” – exactly the rationale cited yesterday by Trump for continuing friendly relations with Riyadh (The Saudis “have been a great ally in our very important fight against Iran,” said Trump).

As for the Saudis themselves, they have long been committing atrocities on par with and far worse than the Khashoggi killing both within their borders and outside, and their partnership with U.S. Presidents has only flourished. As the Saudis beheaded dissidents and created the planet’s worst humanitarian crisis by slaughtering Yemeni civilians without mercy or restraint, President Obama not only authorized the sale of a record amount of weapons to Saudi tyrants, but also cut short his visit to India, the world’s largest democracy, where he was delivering lectures about the paramount importance of human rights and civic freedoms, in order to travel to Riyadh to meet with top U.S. leaders from both political parties to pay homage to the murderous Saudi King who had just died (only in the last month of his presidency, with an eye toward his legacy, did Obama restrict some arms to the Saudis after allowing those weapons to freely flow for eighteen months during the destruction of Yemen).


UK Prime Minister David Cameron – perhaps Obama’s only worthy competitor when it came to simultaneously delivering preening speeches about human rights while arming the world’s worst human rights abusers – actually ordered UK flags flown at half-mast in honor of the noble Saudi despot. All of this took place at roughly the same time that Obama dispatched his top officials, including his Defense Secretary Robert Gates, to pay homage to the rulers of Bahrain after they and the Saudis crushed a citizen uprising seeking greater freedoms.


In 2012, Bahraini Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa came to Washington – fresh off of massacring his own citizens seeking greater freedoms – and, in the words of Foreign Policy, “he left with hands full of gifts from the U.S. State Department, which announced new arms sales to Bahrain today.” How did the Obama administration justify all of this? By invoking exactly the same rationale Trump cited yesterday for his ongoing support of the Saudis: that although the U.S. did not approve of such upsetting violence, its “national security interests” compelled its ongoing support. From Foreign Policy (italics added):

The crown prince’s son just graduated from American University, where the Bahraini ruling family recently shelled out millions for a new building at AU’s School of International Service. But while he was in town, the crown prince met with a slew of senior U.S. officials and congressional leaders, including Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, Senate Armed Services Committee ranking Republican John McCain, as well as several other Washington VIPs.

On Friday afternoon, the State Department announced it was moving forward on a host of sales to the Bahraini Defense Forces, the Bahraini National Guard, and the Bahraini Coast Guard. The State Department said the decision to move forward with the sales was made solely in the interest of U.S. national security, but outside experts see the move as meant to strengthen the crown prince in his struggle inside the ruling family.

“We’ve made this decision, I want to emphasize, on national security grounds,” a senior administration official told reporters on a Friday conference call. “We’ve made this decision mindful of the fact that there remain a number of serious, unresolved human rights issues in Bahrain, which we expect the government of Bahrain to address.”

In 2011, Americans gathered around their TV sets to cheer the inspiring Egyptian protesters gathering in Tahir Square to demand the ouster of the brutal Egyptian tyrant Hosni Mubarak. Most TV announcers neglected to remind excited American viewers that Mubarak had managed to remain in power for so long because their own government had propped him up with weapons, money and intelligence. As Mona Eltahawy put it in the New York Times last year: “Five American administrations, Democratic and Republican, supported the Mubarak regime.”

But in case anyone was confused about the U.S. posture toward this incomparably heinous Egyptian dictator, Hillary Clinton stepped forward to remind everyone of how U.S. officials have long viewed such tyrants. When asked in an interview about how her own State Department had documented Egypt’s record of severe, relentless human rights abuses and whether this might affect her friendship with its rulers, Secretary Clinton gushed: “I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family. So I hope to see him often here in Egypt and in the United States.”


How can anyone pretend that Trump’s praise for the Saudis is some kind of aberration when Hillary Clinton literally heralded one of the planet’s most murderous and violent despots as a personal friend of her family? A Washington Post Editorial at the time proclaimed that “Clinton continues to devalue and undermine the U.S. diplomatic tradition of human rights advocacy” and that “she appears oblivious to how offensive such statements are to the millions of Egyptians who loathe Mr. Mubarak’s oppressive government and blame the United States for propping it up.”

But this just shows the repetitive, dreary game U.S. elites have been playing for decades. Newspaper editorialists and think tank scholars pretend that the U.S. stands opposed to tyranny and despotism and feigns surprise each time U.S. officials lend their support, weaponry and praise to those same tyrants and despots.


And lest anyone try to distinguish Trump’s statement yesterday on the ground that it was false – that it covered up for bad acts of despotic allies by refusing to admit the Crown Prince’s guilt for Khashoggi’s murder – let us recall when Clinton’s successor as Secretary of State, John Kerry, defended Mubarak’s successor, Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, by denying that he had implemented “a coup” when he overthrew Egypt’s elected President in 2013. Instead, proclaimed Kerry, the Sisi-led Egyptian generals, by removing the elected leader, were simply attempting to “restore democracy” – the exact same lie told by the New York Times Editorial Page when right-wing Venezuelan generals in 2002 removed that country’s elected President, Hugo Chávez, only for that paper to hail that coup as a restoration of democracy.


In 2015, as the human rights abuses of the Sisi regime worsened even further, the New York Times reported: “with the United States worried about militants in Sinai and Libya who have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, American officials also signaled that they would not let their concerns with human rights stand in the way of increased security cooperation with Egypt.”

Sound familiar? It should: it’s exactly the rationale Trump invoked yesterday to justify ongoing support for the Saudis. In 2015, the Egyptian dictatorship – as it was murdering dissidents en masse – openly celebrated the flow of U.S. weapons to the regime:



US Embassy Cairo
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@USEmbassyCairo
The US delivered 8 new F16s to the Egy Air Force this week - watch them fly over Cairo! #تحيا_مصر https://youtu.be/3HyIShSxwtY

Excellent article! Christopher Hitchens was right: Henry Kissinger is a war criminal. Remember the Bangladesh genocide in 1971 to which the Nixon administration was complicit? And there was more than that.

I've never heard of it. How was the Nixon Administration complicit in it?

Like today, and for the past 1400+ years, if you deal with Islam you know people are going to die. Whether Nixon was involved, I never heard anything.

I don't understand why the public does not protest any of this.