Larry Beck

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    Remembering What to Remember in America

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    As America approaches the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 disaster, there are still terrorists hanging out in many of the world’s shadowy recesses, some of whom are probably hoping for another opportunity to bring down another shrine to capitalism somewhere in the American homeland. Even with this continuing threat still looming over the nation and after years of a “war on terror” fought in far-off lands, it now seems that the greatest terrorist threat to the US comes from its homegrown “patriots,” who no longer have to hang out in America’s shadowy recesses.

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    Now that the American political and military exit from Afghanistan has stumbled to completion, a key component of America’s egregious and deadly response to 9/11 is finally ended after 20 years of failed policy. But failed policies should have consequences, and this one surely did, both here and abroad. The loss of life in Kabul during the withdrawal is just the latest reminder of yet another “gallant” American adventure gone bad in some foreign land. For 20 years, throughout the Muslim world, we made enemies we didn’t have to make, and we created a whole new cadre of wounded warriors in our midst ready to vanquish the incoming hoards at all cost to save the homeland from itself.

    Imposing Its Will by Force

    To make matters worse, there is a shocking ignorance about even relatively recent history and its relevance to the present and the future. Few Americans seem to fathom that in response to the killing of nearly 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001, the national government set out to extract a bloody bounty to avenge each of those lost lives. While the US mourned its losses, there was hardly a thought or a moment of introspection before the nation’s leaders charted their deadly and destructive course around the world.

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    In every far-off land where the US government seeks to impose its will by force, no matter the reason for doing so in the first place, the people in those invaded lands pay a terrible price. And it always ends the same way. It is important to know that America has not won a war since 1945 and has not fought a war on its own soil since the Civil War. Yet in Afghanistan alone, it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of Afghans have been killed, maimed and wounded, with millions more displaced, by an invasion that those men, women and children neither sought nor provoked.

    As in Vietnam, US government operatives found elements of the local populace in Afghanistan that they assured themselves were welcoming. Then the killing started. And as always, the people we paid in those lands loved us, and the people we killed maimed and devastated hated us. And here is the lesson to be learned: There are always more of the latter than the former. When the payments stop coming, love is quickly lost, but the hatred of the devastated never dies.

    Repeating the Vietnam Playbook

    If there is anything to be gained from the crushing defeat and exit from Afghanistan, it is that after 20 years of repeating the same essential Vietnam playbook, while dealing death and destruction at every turn, many in America may finally understand how Vietnam ended as it did. When one nation invades another, it never ends well. When the invading nation has some messianic notion that it alone can succeed in supplanting existing cultural, social and political norms, and does so at the point of a gun, the invaded nation will eventually rebel, unite and drive out the invaders.

    So, as another 9/11 anniversary looms, Americans must again try to comprehend that our national loss on September 11, 2001, was not sufficient cause to scream at the world like some out-of-control toddler. It was a horrible day because so many innocent people lost their lives and so many more were left injured and broken. But when the US government set out to exact revenge, the worst that we could be was unleashed on others, many of whom were just as innocent as those who lost their lives in America on 9/11.

    In doing so, the US not only failed to wipe out terrorism, but it failed to create even a semblance of a new era of American heroism driven by an army of new American heroes. Rather it succeeded in creating an international force devoid of morality that it then had to sell at home as some group of avenging angels. Selling that narrative became even harder when our own soldiers, as always, started to come home in body bags.

    The US Failed

    There is a tragic symmetry to all of this. President Joe Biden seems to be a truly decent man, and when faced with a difficult choice that paralyzed his predecessors, he made the right choice and stuck to it. But as he did so, he was unable to seize that critical moment to tell the nation that we had failed, as before.

    Embed from Getty Images

    Once again, it seemed impossible to say that we as a nation must be better and do better. When the end in Afghanistan became most tragic at a cost of American lives, Biden echoed George W. Bush after 9/11 in leading the nation to believe in a new sacred mission to root out and kill the cockroaches who did us harm. This is the worst of who we are, and it never leads to anything good. Biden could have and should have done better at that moment. Instead, he felt compelled to affirm that if you kill us, we will kill you, and it will always be disproportionately tilted toward the others, anyone in the way be damned.

    It can only be hoped that no more young men and women, ours or theirs, will be sacrificed on the long-blackened stones of the alters constructed by their elders. There remain many people in the world who do not revere America the way so many here seem to think they should, and some of those will threaten the nation. Yet, after 20 years of fighting terrorism on the soil of others, the threat from afar seems minimally diminished.

    Rather, a whole new generation of wounded warriors walks among us. Some are surely heroes and some are surely villains, but way too many of them are integrated into the squads of self-styled patriots in every community, mostly out in the open, dangerously armed and supported by a significant cohort of those who will be most vocal about the ravages of 9/11. I have never quite understood why you get a patriotism merit badge for killing people in far-off lands or for simply wearing a uniform that to many in the world is synonymous with death, not dignity.

    The Heroes

    But this isn’t about merit or merit badges. Together, as a nation, Americans have to begin to walk away from violence and its always tragic end, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or Chicago. One image stands out to me from the chaos of the Afghanistan exit. It is the photo of two US soldiers in full battle gear lifting a baby over a razor-wired wall to a place of safety. Those soldiers are my heroes. I hope they come home and remember that moment above all else and find their voice to urge others to lift other babies over barriers to safety wherever they may be.

    I give my thanks to Joe Biden for having the courage to end this futile war in Afghanistan. I hope he finds those two soldiers and tells them and the nation that they were the most heroic of all.

    *[This article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Congress Adjourns While the Nation Burns

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      While the fate of many in Afghanistan hangs in the balance, at least Americans at home can breathe a sigh of relief. Both the US House of Representatives and the Senate are on vacation for weeks to come. Citizens of the nation’s capital can recapture their identity from the out-of-town blowhards who give Washington a bad name. The trick now will be to encourage as many Republicans as possible to stay away for good. Admittedly, this may take another election to accomplish, but it is important to get to work on it now.

      On the Senate side of the Capitol, both Democrats and Republicans are leaving town with their party balloons still in the air in celebration of a bill to fund repair and replacement of a portion of the nation’s hard infrastructure that has crumbled before their very eyes for decades. It has become so rare that both parties can agree on anything that the celebration far outweighs the accomplishment. After all that hard work, it seems that it is time for a “well-deserved” weeks-long vacation, the other topic that receives regular bipartisan support.

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      On the House of Representatives side, things are a little more complicated. That group of dedicated public servants adjourned on July 30 for seven weeks, although a short recall is possible for a symbolic vote or two along the way. To be fair, they did pass some meaningful legislation in the last few months. However, only one such piece of legislation has passed the Senate as well and been signed into law — Joe Biden’s initial COVID-19 relief bill (American Rescue Plan). But at least they tried to find legislative solutions on some significant issues, the most important of which are voting rights and police reform.

      With all those senators and representatives now vacationing, it would be easy to conclude from this casual approach to governance that the nation is smoothly sailing to its appointed destiny of renewed greatness. Nothing could be further from the truth.

      There is so much that is so obviously wrong at the moment in today’s America that even the appearance of a weeks-long hiatus should ethically disqualify those vacationing legislators from further service. A “grateful” nation should retire all of them. But that won’t happen, in part because each of them will have a spin machine at work full-time rolling out the tale of just how hard they are working on the issues of the day back in their districts.

      While You Were Vacationing

      Lest you think that I am being a little hard on these self-congratulatory public servants, let’s take a look at what is going on around the nation and around the world while the US Congress has freed itself of its legislative responsibilities.

      Embed from Getty Images

      First, and most obvious, COVID-19 is again ravaging the nation. So, instead of collectively working on urgent public health initiatives, like vaccination mandates, the vacationing legislators are individually on the stump creating more public health confusion. Much of the idiocy makes enough local news that it fortifies those in the caves, covens and churches in Republican districts and states as they go about their communities spreading the disease. The only upside is that many of the vacationing Republican congresspersons are spending their time hanging out with their unmasked and unvaccinated constituents.

      Meanwhile, a country that clings to the notion that the current version of universal suffrage has become a critical component of its “democratic” foundation is in the throes of an unrelenting Republican-led effort to do everything possible to make voting more difficult and less universal. The reasons for this are simple: racism and privilege. Universal suffrage to white conservatives is only a good thing if the “universe” is overwhelmingly composed of right-wing white people. Unfortunately for that dwindling crowd, the universe includes a lot of black and brown people, and a whole bunch of young people who see “universal” as a plus.

      There is an easy way to stop the reversal of the democratic process in America. It is to pass legislation at the national level that sets clear voting rights standards, that increases access to the ballot for all eligible voters and that provides fierce enforcement measures to ensure legal compliance. But you can’t do any of this on vacation.

      While many of those vacationing legislators may come face-to-face with constituents in places where everything is burning, and heatwaves, drought and smoke spread daily devastation, nothing can be done about this either while on vacation. Therefore, environmental laws, climate change legislation, and economic incentives and regulatory mandates remain on hold. The legal framework for cleaner energy production, research and use remains unchanged and woefully inadequate to meet today’s planetary challenges.

      While climate change is taking its deadly toll during the congressional vacation season, we should not forget about gun violence and police violence. Hardly a day goes by in America without multiple firearm deaths and some measure of police overreaction or undertraining resulting in the death or serious injury of someone in some community that the cops are supposed to be protecting. It will be hard to get a full tally from these events over the coming vacation weeks, but every congressperson knows that critically-needed federal legislation to address rampant gun violence and police reform will be on hold, as well.

      No matter how completely oblivious most Americans have become to gun violence (until it hits very close to home), America remains the most likely developed country in which at any moment someone is being killed or killing themselves with a firearm. Since it has been a few weeks now since the nation’s latest high-profile mass killing, it will be hard to make it to the end of this congressional vacation without another one. Thoughts and prayers are all we get when Congress is in session, so their absence shouldn’t change the landscape much on this one. But we should all be disgusted that these public servants can go on vacation while the gun carnage continues unabated and has remained unaddressed in meaningful federal legislation for decades.

      The List Goes On

      I could go on. The list is long. But so is the vacation. Think about how a functioning legislature might be able to make some legislative progress in the coming weeks on universal access to meaningful health care, child care and family leave, a living minimum wage, tax reform and access to quality education.

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      There might even be the opportunity to debate the crippling and continuing impact of America’s systemic racism and how to do something about it. And maybe if they weren’t all on vacation, they could do something constructive, instead of sound bites, about the implementation of America’s long-overdue withdrawal from Afghanistan and its human rights implications, about immigrants and refugees, and about ensuring that the vaccines that Americans are throwing away get into the arms of those begging for them elsewhere.

      They could be doing some of this, but they are doing none of it. They are on vacation.

      *[This article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      “Freedom” Failed to Set Americans Free

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      A little over a month ago, those who were fully COVID-19 vaccinated in America were feeling pretty good about themselves and their prospects for a summer of wining, dining and a bit of travel. The kiddies, even though unvaccinated, could for some unexplained reason do camp, amusement parks and movies with a return to full in-person schooling to come. And just to show how far we had come in turning back the viral tide, those masks could be washed and stored away to await the next pandemic.

      So, what happened? First, a lot of ignorant and selfish people decided not only to stay that way, but to avoid COVID vaccinations as well. They started getting sick and dying, but not enough of them did so to end the plague. Instead, they just spread the disease, now a highly contagious variant, to other unvaccinated people. Then, something really bad happened: It was soon discovered that those ignorant and selfish people were also spreading the disease to vaccinated people, who just haven’t started dying in large numbers, at least not yet.

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      Meanwhile, the commercial machine and its political allies were ramping up to open everything and let the good times roll. It quickly became hard to find a seat at the bar or a hotel room at the beach. Airports and airplanes were filled again with vacationing families, rental cars were so scarce that it is hard to imagine that turnaround time included a drop of disinfectant, and those ever-popular buffet tables were dusted off for the hungry hoards. Forgetting your mask at home or in the car was deemed to be of little consequence.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The US federal government response was to go all in on vaccines as the obvious path to public health and commercial revitalization. The vaccines are now everywhere to be had and free of charge. The only problem with this plan is that it is playing out in America, where freedom is defined by way too many as not having to do anything you don’t want to do that you can get away with. The well-being of others be damned.

      This situation would be easy to ignore if it involved only a fringe group of pock-marked anti-vaccine individualists whose children regularly get the measles and who never go to school. But this time, for some reason, the vaccine-resistant crowd also includes a large percentage of Republicans who are not pock-marked and whose children get a whole raft of vaccines so they can go to school. Then throw in a bunch of members of religious covens whose leaders are chatting with their god about this issue and then let the flock in on the big secret that their god definitely isn’t vaccinated against COVID-19 (even though there seems to be some disagreement about god’s smallpox vaccination status).

      “Freedom”

      There are more ironies here than I can keep up with. Let’s start with “freedom” of choice. Many of those resistant to vaccines resist government “interference” in personal health choices, even though many of those same people are fully engaged in trying to get that same government to prevent women from making their own reproductive choices. Think about that for a moment.

      More ironic yet, many of those in the “freedom” crowd seem untroubled by most government health mandates, yet all of a sudden, putting a vaccine in their bodies to help themselves and others avoid the ravages of a relentless virus has become some political and social litmus test for them. Seatbelt requirements, drinking and driving prohibitions, no smoking in restaurants, a host of required vaccines for employment, travel and schooling all make the good health mandate list. Meanwhile, mindless resistance to life-saving COVID vaccines and masking requirements has become a right-wing badge of honor, generally until the bodies of right-wing family and friends start piling up.

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      However, maybe the grandest irony of all is that the leader of the pack of virus resisters, Donald Trump, is himself fully vaccinated, as are at least his wife and the precious Ivanka. It is bad enough that the Trump clan lied its way to prominence and supposed wealth and that when empowered to do the right thing almost always did the wrong thing. Then, when a pandemic was inserted into the mix, the whole crew conspired to undermine any meaningful national response while over 500,000 people in America died on their watch. While others were gasping for their last breath, Trump got vaccinated just to make sure it wouldn’t be him on that ventilator.

      You would think that as the actions of the Trump clan played out before adoring eyes, those ignorant and selfish acolytes would be pushing others out of the way to get vaccinated. But instead, they can’t wait to parade their “freedom” from vaccine tyranny at every super spreader event they can find, while the vaccinated and protected leader of the pack cheers them on. This seems to work really well until that stairway to heaven leads to a COVID ward in a local hospital surrounded by other ignorant and selfish people, many of whom now use their last breathes to beg for the vaccine.

      Another Wave

      In the face of this insanity, it seems that it is slowly dawning on some public officials that another wave of deadly COVID disease and disorder is closing in. Lots of parents are suddenly worried about their children, some private concerns are worried about something other than their short-term bottom line, and lots of people anticipating a return to crowded workplaces and those already there are staying home. There are even a few people with September travel plans suddenly concerned that playa wherever will be a petri dish when they get there. More importantly, it may be sinking in that there is only one way out of this: mandated vaccines wherever the authority exists to mandate them.

      Embed from Getty Images

      To do this, there can be no more coddling of the ignorant and selfish. Get vaccinated or get out. Everywhere that the federal government has the authority to do so should require proof of vaccine for employment and entry. Start with federal buildings, museums and entertainment venues, airplanes and trains, and the military and military bases. Examine every interstate commerce authority for ways to tighten the vise. No vaccine, no entry, period.

      In those pathetic states and localities where resistance overwhelms public health, everything that can be done to isolate those populations from the rest of us needs to be done. No conventions in Atlanta, no cruise ships docking in Miami, interstate highway dead zones, hotel and restaurant chains shuttering their venues, testing and mask mandates for those who knowingly come in contact with the unvaccinated while engaging in interstate commerce, and no event licenses or advertising dollars to sports and entertainment venues that won’t mandate vaccines for entry.

      If this gets done before the viability of today’s vaccines begins to wane or is crushed by new COVID-19 mutations, Americans, at least, have a chance to put the pandemic behind them. We are lucky that we have this opportunity at all, but we can only take advantage of it if we move swiftly and decisively to mandate vaccines and isolate those who won’t comply. If accomplished, America might then have the moral authority, the scientific and manufacturing strength, and the financial resources to lead the rest of the world to the same place.

      *[This article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Confronting America’s Drive to Collective Amnesia

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      It seems that there is a deep pent-up desire in America to avoid meaningful change at all cost. It is hard enough to confront issues honestly and forthrightly in the best of times. But it is nearly impossible to do so in an environment that prizes consensus over responsibility. The vocabulary of avoidance is everywhere and reaching epic proportions.

      Nowhere is this more obvious and dangerous than the way in which the vaccinated dance around the unvaccinated. If you are paying attention, there is simply no good excuse not to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in America, with some very minor medically-sound exceptions. But instead of just saying that in a straightforward way and then demanding policies and programs that mandate vaccinations, we are acting like vaccinations are some prize for knocking over a stack of steel bottles at a carnival stand: “Step right up, little lady, a quick flick of the needle and you are on your way with this keepsake stuffed elephant. Bring that big guy along with you, and you win the daily double, the stuffed elephant and a genuine MAGA hat.”

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      It is time to stop begging ignorant people to do something smart, and selfish people to do something selfless. How about: “Step right up little lady and show me your vaccination certificate if you want to eat here. Same for you big guy.” Or: “Mom, your kid wants to play high school football, but he hasn’t turned in the required COVID vaccination certificate.” Or my personal favorite: “I would have invited you to join us, but you are not vaccinated, and adding someone so stupid and selfish to the group seemed like a bad idea that would only serve to validate your stupidity and selfishness.”

      Validating willful ignorance is never a good idea, but it is a really bad idea when doing so puts people at risk. Further, most of us usually try to avoid truly selfish people, so let’s double down now to contribute to the common good. For impact, we have to be willing to tell the ignorant and selfish what we are doing and why. We have to be willing to demand that our institutions meet this challenge as well. It is beyond time for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to aggressively mandate vaccinations wherever they are authorized to do so.

      Another useful component of the avoidance vocabulary is the word “colleague.” The word seems to imply someone with whom you work, a co-worker. It shouldn’t apply to the SOB in your midst who seeks to undo everything you are trying to do. So, stop using the word “colleague” for those you believe to be willfully ignorant, selfish, dangerous and/or just plain too stupid to get out of your way. This is particularly so in the public arena, where every moron seems to be somebody’s colleague during any discourse — “My colleagues are unable to see that making it harder for black people to vote is racist behavior.” They could either not be your “colleague” or not be “racist,” but they shouldn’t ever be both.

      Normal vs. New Normal

      How about “normal” and “new normal” to make things sound just great as we surge forward as a nation? Returning to “normal” only works if your “normal” was fine with you. It avoids the uncomfortable truth that many people don’t want to return to their “normal,” because it sucked. As for a “new normal,” it is hard to imagine a less precise way of confronting the critical need for change to actually achieve a more perfect union. It surely creates an easy path to avoiding any measured discussion about hunger, poverty, access to meaningful health care, access to quality education, rampant gun violence, and racial and social justice, among other difficult issues.

      So, when I hear people say they want a “new normal,” it sounds a lot to me like they are talking about some vision of a better world that will miraculously emerge if we hold hands and pray a lot. What is needed is not a “new normal” but a new and transformed America where eliminating poverty is more important than giving up a tax break for your vacation home, where health care isn’t rationed by insurance companies and their medical allies, where school buildings and the teachers in them provide the same resources to black children that are provided to white children, and no child, not a single one, goes to bed hungry in America.

      Embed from Getty Images

      That’s the America that I want to see and to which there is so much resistance. “Normal” and “new normal” are comfort food concepts to spare the already comfortable the discomfort of sacrifice for the common good.

      And then just when you think you might be getting at least some Americans to turn their attention to a better life on Earth for the community of man, along comes billionaire space “tourism” to further distract a population grasping for the most banal of distractions. If you can’t afford Disneyland, an RV or even a trip to Taco Bell, America’s wealthy can give you the illusion of tourism in space. It is truly heartening to hear the mega brats talk so lovingly of opening up space to the masses, while working so hard to avoid sharing their wealth with those same masses. And take note that this illusion is getting enough attention and gushing goodwill to give us another touchstone on the golden road to “normal.”

      While I await my economy center seat with Kim Kardashian on one side and Martha Stewart on the other, I am getting pumped up for the debates to come as schools are about to open and the parental handwringing season of rage is commencing. This is so much fun, because in America’s dysfunctional democracy school decisions are seen as local decisions, thereby ensuring that everything from masks to midriffs, from black books to white books, from defunding teachers to defunding cops and the like, will be on the agenda somewhere everyday beginning now.

      This will be fine theater that is inconsistent with informed dialogue and ensures further avoidance of confronting systemic issues of import. Optics again will win the day, and the symbolism of preserving norms will overwhelm the content of change. The real losers this time will be the kids who will have to watch their parents stuff social, political, economic and moral genies back into the bottles from which they have again emerged, while further polluting the minds of the same kids they say they are trying to save.

      It seems beyond hope that all of this avoidance of meaningful change and the vocabulary that enables that avoidance will engender an equal and opposite reaction. The reason is simple: Only the forgotten are seeking meaningful change while so many in the rest of the nation want nothing more than continued amnesia.

      *[A version of this article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Squandered Resolve Puts Transformation at Risk in America

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      Now that the internationalists and their kindred neoconservatives have had their moment in the sun and reestablished America’s “greatness” on the world stage, it is time to get back to the domestic challenge of trying to bring the reality of America into closer proximity to President Joe Biden’s international version of an imperfect nation always seeking to be better and always better than other alternatives. While democracy versus autocracy has a nice ring to it on the outside, dysfunctional democracy at home is still dysfunctional democracy, hardly the poster child for an ideological confrontation.

      So, it was a little disconcerting that during my recent road trip, the Democrats pissed away another month without the courage to act on their stated convictions in the face of the continuing Republican assault on the notion of shared governance for the common good. Talk of progress, incremental change, consensus and bipartisanship continues to be a calling card among those too timid to embrace the national transformation that America’s institutions require to meet today’s challenges at home and abroad.

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      Even when not fulminating about rampant socialism, wounded white pride, voter fraud and defunding the police, congressional Republicans and those they seek to embrace continue to invent new fantasies to drive their message and excuse their obstruction. To make matters worse, a significant component of the messaging about a post-pandemic return to “normal” includes the continuing empty promise of positive change for a better future for all. Hello Juneteenth, goodbye the difficult challenge of doing something about the nation’s legacy that created Juneteenth in the first place.

      On the Road

      Out and about in part of the American heartland for a month, as the COVID-19 pandemic seemed to fade from view, I had the sense that many in America simply wanted to party, seeking some mystical freedom from thought, work and pain. Daily gun carnage, voter suppression, unemployment, pandemic worries, crumbling infrastructure and the like all seemed to blow away in the face of loading the bait, starting the engine and hitting the water. The only mention of climate change was the micro notion that the almost daily temperature fluctuations were mucking up the fishing.

      In the meantime, while the water beckoned, a federal judge in California was favorably comparing assault rifles to pocketknives, gun violence beat the coronavirus to the top of the death chart in many communities, the minimum wage was finishing second to not working at all, and heat, drought and wildfires began their annual march to increased human misery. Then just to show the country how best to ensure prosperity amid these evils, the great state of Texas added unregulated wandering wacko gunslingers to its list of model citizens, while doing everything possible to keep real model citizens from voting.

      Most disturbing of all, however, is the continued national resistance to public discourse that focuses on collective solutions to address the inadequacies of the present national response to even the most basic national needs. Think how much better off the nation would be if just about everyone got a COVID-19 vaccine. But no, not possible, because way too many people care way too little about the health and welfare of those around them. In its present incarnation as a cultural phenomenon, mindless adherence to non-critical thinking is America’s greatest barrier to collectively defining the common good and then acting to achieve it.

      Woke and Cancel Culture

      This same phenomenon finds its voice in every corner of the right-wing commentariat. In addition to the unexplained evils of some ill-defined socialism, “cancel culture” and whatever “woke” is supposed to mean are all the rage. As for “woke,” it is way past time for “woke” to be put to sleep. Its popular negative implication is aimed at those who rely to a great extent on an awareness of important facts and some capacity for critical thinking, often related to racial and social justice issues. Vilifying the “woke” surely suggests that those not “woke” are so proud of their ignorance that seeking knowledge is to be avoided at all cost.

      Embed from Getty Images

      As for all those terrorized by “cancel culture,” I have some breaking news. It is nothing new. It has been around for millennia. It is the foundation of virtually every organized religion in the world, as but one obvious example. Further, I imagine that each of us could come up with a list of people and concepts that we would like to see a lot less of, so I suggest we start by resolving never to buy a pillow made in America again and by pretending that TikTok is something special about clocks and nothing more.

      On the upside, it is good to see that Biden is still president of the United States, and Vice-President Kamala Harris can still laugh at the wrong time while continuing to work hard at the forefront of immigration reform and voting rights advocacy. But there is so much to do and so few of the institutional components in place to do much of anything.

      As if on cue, a condo building in government-resistant Florida “inexplicably” fell to the ground, killing dozens of people who had nothing to do with the decades of failed governance that permitted natural sand dunes to be turned into unnatural high-rise buildings. As hard as it to watch and as tragic as the final outcome is sure to be, the random human suffering that a pancaked condo building can bring to the fore is a vivid reminder that no one among us is immune if government consistently fails to act to ensure public safety.

      Vaccinations

      That continuing failure remains all around us. It was there before I went on my road trip, and it is there now that I have returned. Progress on COVID-19 vaccination rates has slowed because no one has the political courage to penalize those who fail to get vaccinated for the public good. The Republicans and their police allies still remain silent in the face of a gun culture in America that only grows, along with the stock of armaments in private hands and the unregulated access to those armaments. Bridges and tunnels are no safer today than yesterday. And, by the way, the right to vote continues to be endangered every day in America, just as it is in so many of those countries that we, in America, like to think of as “Third World countries.”

      As if to help me sort all of this out, one evening in a forested state park in Minnesota, a porcupine wandered into my campsite. It was a clear evening, but quite windy. The porcupine looked at me and my red solo cup and the campfire and opted to avoid confrontation. All good, as it moved away without damage to my tent or me. Then it made a major miscalculation and headed rapidly to near the top of thin tree, only to get stuck there dangerously swaying in the wind. It eventually got dark and the wind died down. I imagine that the porcupine breathed a sigh of relief, timidly climbed down from its precarious perch and resolved to try to avoid making the same stupid mistake again.

      Like the porcupine, Americans have created their own perilous times, threatened mostly by their fears that have been hardened by willful ignorance. This leaves way too much of the path forward blocked by miscalculation and misinformation, followed by a breathed sigh of relief each time that the nation manages to escape disaster.

      The next time, however, the nation may not be so lucky unless more of us commit to making our world less reliant on good fortune and more reliant on the determined goodwill of those around us. Sadly, a nation so awash in willful ignorance is highly unlikely to nurture the requisite collective conscience.

      *[This article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Can Joe Biden Convince America?

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      It has become so hard to be hopeful about America. Disappointment awaits around every corner and under every rock. Yet, there he is, Joe Biden, president of the United States of America, telling the nation that we can be so much better than we are and then having the guts to tell us what we need to do to get there. Other “leaders” have given it a try, but there was always one important thing missing. What makes Biden different than the others is having the political courage to tell the nation how we have failed to be what we have for so long told ourselves that we were and are.

      Biden Scores Key Wins in First 100 Days

      READ MORE

      I don’t know of anyone who predicted that this 78-year-old lifelong politician could seize the moment and grip the nation. But somehow, he has. It was to be expected that anything would be better than Trump, and Biden could have coasted on that alone. But that is not what is happening.

      President Biden has used quiet confidence, competence, compassion and a solid moral foundation to propose the most progressive agenda in decades to try to lead Americans to where they didn’t know they wanted to go. Senator Bernie Sanders, among others, understood and articulated the problems and offered a vision of fundamental reform. Now, somewhat out of the clear blue, Biden may prove to be a leader capable of actually delivering some of that reform.

      Biden Has More in Mind

      After the election in 2020, there was much talk about the Biden who most thought to be a transitional figure, at best. But while we were talking to each other, it seems that Biden was actually telling himself and maybe a few others that he had much more than that in mind. Progressives like me didn’t even know he was listening to us. Maybe we had become so often disappointed that we never quite understood how far compassion and empathy can take someone when they are empowered with the opportunity to try to make a real difference.

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      To be clear, it will take much more than compassionate leadership to move America even slowly toward fulfilling its promise. It will take steady and competent administration officials and public servants committed to progressive ideals and then willing and able to turn ideals into public policy. It will take a united Democratic Party at all levels of government to both support and actively promote the policy initiatives. And then it will take President Biden to remind the whole nation that good people not only can accomplish good things, but that there is a moral imperative to do so now.

      There will be no help whatsoever from Republican politicians at the national level, and the right-wing media apparatus will only ramp up its bile. Somewhere, around 70% of those who identify as Republicans still reject the reality that Biden is the legitimate president of the United States. With this in mind, Biden should ignore the national Republican Party and its acolytes until there is a clear and unequivocal affirmation of the results of the last presidential election from their political “leaders,” including the disgraced and seditious losing candidate.

      In the current political environment, the most basic tenet of democratic governance continues to require repetition, so here goes: No one can be entrusted with democratic governance without a commitment to the democratic process, the rule of law and the resulting government. So, for all of you Republicans who still are waiting for Trump’s “triumphant” return and those who try to diminish the institutional significance of the insurrection that shook the nation, you have earned the right to be ignored. No nation can succeed at governance if those who do not believe in government continue to have a seat at the table.

      I have some confidence that Biden knows this as well. And even more confidence that those counseling the president are exploring all of the realistic options to achieve their policy objectives. Further, they know that it will be imperative to negotiate with Democratic officials at all levels of government to increase broad public support for his progressive agenda.

      Republican Officials

      There may also be some state and local Republican officials willing to sign on. However, Biden and his supporters will have to work much harder than they should have to in order to convince state and local Republican officials of the painfully obvious value of federal support for education, health care, child care, roads and bridges, better wages, affordable housing and the like. After years of local community neglect, most Republican officials still seem willing to reflexively resist any federal mandates, no matter how much those mandates might benefit their constituencies.

      In this context, it will not be necessary to fix everything at once. However, it will be essential to initially restore a national faith in the capacity of government to meet collective societal challenges and to convince the nation that solutions to 21st-century problems require an actively engaged national government.

      Embed from Getty Images

      To succeed at this, Biden will have to directly address the most persistent element of resistance to collective national solutions — the perception that to implement policy changes beneficial to all requires that some give up a little individual “liberty” and a measure of individual “security.” There is only one cohesive response. It is that realizing a better America engenders a collective liberty that provides a more secure future for all of us.

      This is what transformation looks like. Over the 40 years since Ronald Regan first stained governance with his disdain for the very government he was chosen to lead, much has been lost. A certain atrophy has set in that has often resulted in government failure, not because government can’t work, but because political leaders never trusted the institutions that were essential to success. It was much easier to find failure than the courage to fix it. And it was even easier to allow delusional waves of national greatness to mask a shameful level of collective despair.

      Convincing Americans

      If President Biden is to be transformational, he will need to convince a cynical nation that government is worthy of the trust needed to meet the challenges ahead. Then, he will need to fight for the resources required to meet those challenges and to demonstrate that we are writing a better chapter this time because we finally realize the distortion of previous chapters.

      To write new and better chapters, the usual national distractions will have to be avoided. Two simple “truths” need to be emphasized. The first is that deficit spending is not a threat to needed reform, while resistance to paying taxes to meet public policy objectives is a threat. The second is that costly international adventures can only be avoided by accepting that “winning” is not a given. In both instances, simple cost/benefit analysis would serve America well and temper the hubris at the core of so much national angst.

      Joe Biden may well be suited to rise above the exaggerated pride and self-confidence that has driven many of his predecessors to achieve far less than they could have or should have achieved and that has shattered promise after promise. Maybe Joe is the guy. I sure hope so. It is nice for the moment to feel like some of us are no longer walking alone.

      *[This article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      America’s Moment of Reckoning on the Path to Justice

      by

      “Justice” and “accountability” are often used interchangeably in public discourse these days, whether in the immediate context of the trial of Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer, or in the broader context of racial justice and social justice. It would advance both discussions to distinguish between the two concepts.

      Using the Chauvin murder case as an illustration, a just result for the deceased George Floyd would be if, somehow, he was restored to life. Justice would be served and society could go on to the issue of accountability for those who caused harm to Floyd in the first place. Justice for other people of color who remain alive would be a new world that does not put so many of them in constant peril.

      What Is Different About George Floyd’s Death?

      READ MORE

      Yet the word “justice” is often substituted for “accountability,” perhaps to give some grander notion to the fundamental concept of holding others accountable for their harmful actions. Justice also seems to imply a certain freedom from the retribution that is often a component of the demands of those seeking accountability.

      The Derek Chauvin Murder Trial

      In the Chauvin case, whether “justice” is served or “accountability” is achieved rests within a singular legal proceeding. We now know that some measure of accountability has been achieved with the guilty verdict just rendered. And we know that George Floyd is still dead. So, in this context, there will be no justice for Floyd or his family and friends.

      Not only did the trial itself fail to achieve justice for any of them, but the larger “system” also failed all of them and has not been significantly altered to ensure justice for others. On these broader issues, the distinction between justice and accountability may have a profound impact on the outcome of America’s racial and social conflict.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The “justice” at the heart of this discussion contemplates that which is equitable and fair and impartial. “Accountability” refers to being held responsible for one’s actions. It has nothing to do with equity or fairness, except to the extent that holding someone accountable for his/her actions may seem fairer than not doing so.

      Seeking justice seems to be aspirational, a goal. The point at which justice is actually achieved never seems to arrive. Some among us think of the search as a lifelong struggle. That struggle is for me — a lawyer and a progressive — very personal but not personal in the usual sense of that word. Like almost everyone, I want to be treated fairly. Generally, I have been. And that makes me and my view of justice very different from those who believe that generally they have been treated unfairly or that they live in an inequitable or partial world.

      The challenge in finding common ground rests at the juncture where my privilege meets the disadvantage and misfortune of others. My world looks pretty fair to me if I am only focused on myself. Not perfect but pretty fair. A black father living in inner-city poverty in today’s America probably doesn’t see his life in the same terms that I do mine and almost certainly questions whether society values his child’s life to the same extent that my child’s life is valued.

      Now, take a look at accountability. If someone walks up to me and hits me in the face or walks up to the black guy and hits him in the face, both of us will want some measure of the same thing to happen — that the person who hit us be held accountable.

      If justice is aspirational, that leaves it for accountability to act as a deterrent to reckless or harmful conduct. It is pretty clear that “justice” isn’t what America has. We have a justice system that too often administers justice unjustly and is way more suited for determining accountability if that can be done in a just manner.

      By any reasoning, accountability is an indispensable component of a system of justice. If America can just start there, those who most often suffer will begin to look at the justice system as a part of government that meets a most fundamental need. Meanwhile, those who are held accountable for their actions will provide a template for the likely outcome of similar misconduct and a deterrent to that misconduct.

      Are You Paying Attention?

      To highlight how critical the distinction is, it is surely hard to understand how any experienced white police officer, never mind one a scant 10 miles away from where George Floyd lost his life at the hands of a white police officer, could kill an unarmed 20-year-old black man after stopping him for an expired auto registration tag. This occurred while Chauvin was facing decades in prison for the unconscionable escalation of a small-time police intervention to what a jury has now determined to be the culpable disregard for the life of another human being.

      Officer Kim Potter, the white veteran police officer 10 miles away, had to be aware of what was going on in the Chauvin trial when she escalated a minor infraction to a deadly encounter. Did she not care? Did she think that she was a much smarter and better cop than Chauvin, or that her moral compass was somehow fixed somewhere differently than Chauvin’s? She shot a 20-year-old black kid at point-blank range after a traffic stop. I expect that she wishes that she had kept her weapon where it belonged and that, maybe even in memory of George Floyd, had told that young black man to go home and make sure to update his auto registration. And, oh, by the way, you missed a court date and you need to get that taken care of as well.

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      I don’t know if she will be held accountable, but she probably wishes she didn’t have to find out. While this was festering, the public learned that cops had killed a 13-year-old boy in Chicago and a 16-year-old boy in Maryland. Then, minutes before the announcement of the Chauvin verdict, a 16-year-old black girl in Columbus, Ohio, was shot dead by a cop. If you can’t see something terribly wrong here, you aren’t paying attention.

      The core of the problem is the justice part of the equation. Unfortunately, the justice system is working exactly as it was designed to work. Way too many police officers seem to believe that America’s justice system will protect them from accountability because that is how it is designed and how it has generally operated. It seems that the only accountability they fear is rejection by fellow officers operating within the same entitled system. Rarely do cops believe that another cop has gone too far.

      Is Justice Possible?

      In Chauvin’s case, fellow officers testified against him, some apparently believing that his actions were beyond what they could countenance. But what Chauvin’s trial did not include was any evidence about the seemingly lengthy record of official misconduct allegations against him. If he is a “bad apple” now, why did it take the agonizing video of George Floyd begging for his life for the supposed “good apples” to finally step forward?

      And more importantly, where are the good apples now that the Chauvin trial is over? Will we see them in other trials? Will we see them stand up publicly against the bad apples in their midst? Will they become vocal and visible advocates for serious gun control so that every cop on the street isn’t running around so fearful in the moment that whatever judgment and compassion they may have fails to engage?

      I know what the answers to these questions have been. I know there can be no justice if the justice system remains unjust. And I know that accountability is the only path to a systemic transformation that will begin to look like equal justice for all.

      *[A version of this article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Obstructing Governance as a Substitute for Public Policy

      by

      It is hard to figure out why it seems so difficult to be a white guy in today’s America, even though I am a white guy and should be able to figure it out. The problem seems to be that there are just too many people in America who are not white guys, or even white guys and gals combined. Whenever this feeling seems to overwhelm some white guys, their solution to the perceived problem is to try to preclude something that non-white guys want: entry into the country, voting rights, equal opportunity, racial justice, access to meaningful health care and, way too often, the simple desire to live in peace or continue to live at all.

      So, now that the mass shootings have started again in earnest in America after seemingly taking a small break during the height of pandemic restrictions, it is again mostly white guys out front depriving lots of others of their lives and sense of security. Of course, who can forget the hordes of white guys storming the US Capitol a few months ago trying to prevent their fearless leader from the perceived insult of a permanent return to his beloved mansion in Florida.

      Escaping Thucydides’ Trap: Keeping the Peace Between Rising and Reigning Powers

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      It is worth asking who these white guys are who continue to board their trains to nowhere, callously leaving misery, destruction and even death in their wake. Some are among the really challenged people in America. Among other things, they seem to be intellectually incapable of seeing the connection between incredibly easy access to firearms and mass human slaughter in the American landscape. Find an assault weapon, and you are likely to find a challenged white guy.

      However, those white guys fueling the nation’s resistance to humane immigration policies, to easy access to the polls to affect democratic change, to a racial reckoning and equal opportunity, to universal access to meaningful health care, and even to a comprehensive public health response to the pandemic are all on the same trains to nowhere, along with their gun nut buddies. Tragically, they enable America to fail and they empower each other to add critical mass to their efforts.

      Many of these white people live in neighborhoods with a lot of other white people, only some of whom share their views. Some live in more diverse neighborhoods or pockets of poverty where they often hide their views until, for some reason, they have had enough of “others” and snap. But a whole bunch of these white people were among the 74 million people who voted for Trump in the last election.

      Thwarting Efforts to Govern

      Worse yet, they and their Republican cohorts are now determined to thwart any Biden administration effort to govern. Governing is not the same thing as being a government. Governing is, in its most basic sense, the exercise of authority thru the making of policy and the administration of that policy. President Joe Biden often has the authority to act, but to exercise that authority within America’s constitutional framework requires collaboration with, and the cooperation of, other institutional elements of that framework.

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      Take immigration policy as an example, since there is often talk of “comprehensive immigration reform.” The Biden administration can determine policy and administer elements of that policy through executive action. It can humanely allow Latino children to enter the United States and then make sure that they have a bed, a blanket and enough food to sustain them. After that, figuring out how these immigrant minors should be processed and treated becomes much more complicated, unless it is viewed as a component of a much larger US immigration problem that requires “comprehensive reform.”

      Enter Congress, enter the Republicans in Congress, enter the white guys on the trains to nowhere and that comprehensive reform is almost certainly doomed. So, what happens to the children? With some luck, they disappear into the fabric of the world of undocumented immigrants striving to find a place in a nation where a lot of white guys don’t want them to be.

      Although the immigration example is bad enough, there is more bad news from the white guys on the trains to nowhere. They don’t seem to want anybody but themselves to have a go at voting. It would be nice to say that this effort will fail in that exceptional “model democracy” known as America. But hold on, the white guys have a plan: You change the voting rules to get better results. This is easier than changing the policies, programs and personalities that many of the voters rejected under the old rules.

      Just to make sure that nobody mistook the latest white guy effort at voter suppression for a serious effort to make voting easier, those wacky Republicans in the Georgia legislature, aided and abetted by the Republican governor, just criminalized providing food and water to their fellow citizens waiting in voting lines. That is, of course, only part of what they did, but enough to fully demonstrate the lengths to which the white guys on the trains to nowhere will go to preserve their shrinking political influence.

      You see, prior voting practices in Georgia often left voters of color waiting in longer lines than their white counterparts, so instead of legislating to reduce wait times for everybody, someone came up with the bright idea of making it harder to wait in line. (This plan will work even better if the white guys also make it a crime to sell those little cooler bags to anyone who isn’t a white guy.)

      The Key That Unlocks the Door

      I wish I were making this up, but I am not. The Biden administration’s capacity to govern is being challenged not by people who have a sincere agenda of constructive reform for the nation, but by those same kind of white guys on their trains to nowhere who have just criminalized giving grandma a drink of water while she waits in line to vote.

      Even some things as potentially lifesaving for white guys as wearing masks and seeking COVID-19 vaccines seem challenging to way too many of them. While they should overwhelmingly embrace these measures if for no other reason than if only people of color get vaccinated and white guys die off, their situation gets even more desperate. Yet the world has watched while many white guys on their trains to nowhere have overtly contributed to tens of thousands of COVID deaths in the US and continue to try to thwart coordinated government efforts to address the nation’s pandemic and public health crisis.

      For some reason, even their significant contribution to the deaths of so many has failed to pause the white guys on their trains to nowhere long enough to stand back so that those of good will in government have the space they need to function and the support they need to govern.

      For as long as the mindless obstruction continues, the nation’s governmental institutions will be significantly impeded from pursuing the long-delayed promise of a more just and equitable America. And it will be that much harder to demonstrate that good government is the key that unlocks the door.

      *[This article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      The Privileged Path in America

      by

      It is hard to figure out how anything as important as access to COVID-19 vaccines could be left to chance and uncertainty. Welcome to America’s vaccine rollout, where privilege only works some of the time. And some of the privileged just can’t seem to get it to work for them like it almost always has. Very frustrating.

      Equity, in the sense of fairness and impartiality, has never been an American strength. Rather, the nation’s history glorifies those who grab what they can get, even when what they can get is at the expense of others. “Success” itself is prized above a fair and impartial process for achieving it that has equality of opportunity at its core. While there is nothing new about this observation, its application to both the COVID-19 vaccine distribution issues and the more general drive to confront societal inequities that the coronavirus pandemic has dramatized is worthy of discussion.

      Germany’s Handling of the Pandemic: A Model of Incompetence?

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      After failing at every turn to create a national urgency to adopt and implement recognizable public health measures to address the pandemic, and amid a dizzying array of inadequate state and local solutions, it became apparent that most Americans were in it for themselves. This provides the oxygen on which privilege thrives. So, for many, making individual decisions has been freed from any collective moral imperative. The Biden administration, with quiet competence, is trying to use a new national response to the pandemic as a foundation for altering this key impediment to a more equitable society.

      People with resources, a good job, a good computer and good internet access have thrived, while many “essential” workers were left to fend for themselves. The privileged know that “essential” was often just shorthand for interchangeable people required to put themselves at risk, frequently for low pay and no benefits. Humanity wasn’t a big consideration. Worse yet, the privileged didn’t seem too troubled to know that these “essential” workers frequently headed home to a crowded apartment or multi-generational substandard housing, increased health risks and limited access to meaningful health care. The joke was clearly on them.

      Those for whom testing and contact tracing would have been paths to some measure of health security seemed less likely to have access to either, while some of those wanting to take a break in Mexico or Disneyland easily found a test and cleverly avoided the rigors of contact tracing. So the beat goes on. But to what end?

      Three Threads

      While there will be a day when masks, social distancing, testing and maybe even COVID-19 vaccines will no longer be a part of daily life for most of us, it is not clear at all that any real lessons will have been learned about how best to engender the collective will necessary to meet critical national societal needs. There are three threads that seem to be coalescing to ensure that a return to “normal” is a return to a stratified society where the privileged almost always win and the underprivileged most often lose.

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      First, there is the power of “normal” itself. The people with the most influence want a return to their normal while those with the least influence generally want something better than a return to their normal. This is understandable, but guess which team is going to win unless good government and good people step in to level the playing field.

      Second, to successfully confront inequity, it is essential to understand the impact of inequity and the value that it brings to privilege and the impediments that it brings to those without privilege. Then, those with privilege have to be willing to part with some of it. (Not necessarily a zero-sum game.) For this to occur at the systemic and institutional levels required for enduring change, some awakening will have to occur. There is a small possibility that when some of those with privilege lose anyway, as with the vaccine distribution, it may engender a deeper empathy for those who seem to lose all the time.

      Third, there is the morally bankrupt Republican Party and its shameful indifference to the suffering of even those who still seem to believe there is something there to admire. The Biden administration, Democrats in Congress and progressives everywhere have gone big and actually gotten important things legislatively accomplished to meet the current pandemic crisis. But that effort demonstrated how tenuous a hold any effort to make America better for all actually has on the nation’s essential legislative process. With all that we have gone through as a nation in the last year, you would think that maybe some moral light would have been lit in some recesses where it had not previously penetrated, yet I don’t see much evidence of that.

      A Big Deal

      For now, President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan has been signed into law providing the legislative framework and funding for the critical elements of a national plan to confront the coronavirus pandemic and its economic fallout. And, perhaps even more significant for the future of the nation, Biden and congressional Democrats have given legislative gravitas to a progressive and activist agenda for confronting economic and social inequality in America. This is a big deal.

      As with every advance in a deeply divided nation, there will be pushback from those who have for decades cratered meaningful attempts at progressive social and economic legislation. Even the obvious inequities driven by pernicious systems and exposed in big bright lights by the pandemic haven’t broken the stranglehold that the pushback machine has on large segments of public thinking.

      In this context, the national response to every drive for racial justice in America’s history is instructive as progressives strive to use the lessons of the pandemic to inform a full and appropriate response to it and to the underlying inequities that helped fuel America’s pandemic response failures. Every time that racism boils its way to the surface, it readily becomes apparent that it is the systemic racism deniers in our midst who rally together to ensure that systemic change is avoided.

      Think of it in these terms: America wallowed in pandemic response failure not because some idiot didn’t wear a mask, but because coronavirus deniers stood in the way of a collective public health response. To alter this formula, Americans have to be separated from the cherished notion that they are all good people at heart. While it is undeniable that there are many good and decent Americans working every day to serve others at some risk to themselves, it is also shockingly obvious how easy it is for individuals to separate themselves from the common good.

      Unexamined privilege is the vehicle that often allows those who separate themselves from the common good to somehow feel good about themselves. Until this dynamic is changed, it will be hard to see how America can change for the better.

      *[This article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More