A Broken Land

Photo by Reuters

By James Moore

“The government of the United States doesn’t want peace. It wants to exploit its system of exploitation, of pillage, of hegemony through war. It wants peace, but what’s happening in Iraq? What happened in Lebanon? Palestine? What’s happening? What’s happened over the last hundred years in Latin America and in the world?” – Hugo Chavez

I am trying to be optimistic. The nature of Americans is to buy into the notion that anything is possible in our country. We are convinced the only two kinds of people in this nation are millionaires and those who will very soon be millionaires. There is little accommodation for failure. If you live in the United States you are expected to buy into the calculus that X amount of effort will always produce Y amount of results, which is, obviously, utter nonsense. Failure, however, is always your fault, not a flaw in the land of the free and the articulations of capitalism. You are expected to pull yourself up by your bootstraps even if you were born into a family that cannot afford boots.

This delusion that anybody and everybody can make it here is often central to the conflicts at the heart of our body politic. The successful, hurrying down that smooth, shining road toward a great horizon of affluence, do not wish to look into the ditch and see the losers struggling to climb back up onto the roadbed. They are there of their own accord. Why should we afford them a hand up when they might become reliant on assistance? America’s unresolved moral dilemma revolves around how much to help, and that unanswered question has almost always informed our politics and created the great divide between our two major political parties. How much government is too much government?

There is one Republican consultant who is famously quoted as saying his party will not be happy until government is “shrunk to the size that can be drowned in a bathtub.” The anti-Washington infection that has spread across the land began in earnest with Ronald Reagan, who once said, “The scariest words in the English language were, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” He quickly set out to make his hoary aphorism into a reality by blowing up the Air Traffic Controllers’ union to intimidate American labor and pretending that AIDS would go away if the feds would just ignore its increasing rate of fatality.

Trump made a similar assertion as the pandemic was spreading throughout the population when he said, “It’s going to disappear. It’s disappearing.” His proclamation, a barely subtle attempt to remove government from responsibility of managing the spread of the coronavirus, was made the day after he was released from being hospitalized for the disease. Spring weather, though, made him hopeful he would be shed of any responsibility for Washington’s involvement. “You know,” he said, “A lot of people think that (coronavirus) goes away in April with the heat, as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April.” Instead, millions subsequently died. What went away were family members, loved ones, children and grand parents, while Trump talked of horse tranquilizer cures.

Rank conservatism has, historically, offered nothing but suffering to Americans. There is, in fact, no such brand of politics functioning in this country. It might be considered conservative to cut corporate taxes and believe the falsehood that freed capital will then be invested back into jobs and economic expansion, but that never happens. Nobody gets trickled down on. Investors are paid fat dividend checks and corporate boards buy back stocks at premiums to regain control of their companies from small shareholders. Hoarding capital and cutting taxes to giant businesses does little more than generate huge national debts for the government, and nobody does that better than “conservatives.” Trump and his massive tax cuts for business created a $7.2 trillion dollar increase in the federal deficit in the four years he was in office, a figure that presently accounts for 30 percent of the total national public indebtedness. Conservative George W. Bush cut corporate taxes just as he launched a war that would eventually cost a few trillion and left President Obama an historically high deficit, which the Democratic President cut in half before leaving office.

Conservatives do not act conservatively in this country. What they really want is a form of anarchy, an expression of the attitude that government’s only role is to pave roads, protect the border, and then get the hell out of the way. We are supposed to rely on our own “rugged independence” to succeed, a concept whose notional value is utterly worthless. Nobody really makes it on their own. Wealthy business magnates like to claim they built their companies without government assistance but that obfuscates the investment of tax dollars in the infrastructure and common carrier laws that made delivery possible for their products, whether digital or physical. Governments built the roads and harbors and airports, keeps them safe and operational, and provides regulations to offer some assurance consumers will not be buying unsafe drugs or food or fly in airplanes that have not met safety standards. When those rules fail, and an aircraft falls from the sky or masses become addicted to opioids, the causes tend to be corporations cutting corners to increase profits and serve the capitalism that has made America an economic engine for much of the world.

Argumentation over how much government, and its optimal role, is central to the division of the American electorate. We have split into camps that can no longer seem to compromise or find a middle ground that is best for our country. Progressive thinkers believe in government as the organizing principle of any society and that it gives life to a culture and an economy by creating an environment of opportunity. The conservative belief is that the larger the government the less freedom is offered the individual. Their primary assertion is proved false by their own politics, which have taken away reproductive and even voting rights while banning certain books their standards claim ought not be available, and forcing their Christian religion into public institutions like schools and government. Conservatism explicitly is a resistance to change and the implications of that are we would have no equal rights for minorities or women or regulations to protect our air and water or even minimum wage laws.

If ruination comes to America, therefore, it will be driving a tank loaded with ballistic missiles of explosive partisan grievance. The symptoms of our potential collapse are already clear and manifest. The most recent former president just spent a day at his resort consorting with Viktor Orban, the dictator and authoritarian leader of Hungary. While his formal title is prime minister, Orban has made himself the source of all policy and government actions, discriminatory and unfair to millions who disagree. Undoubtedly, Trump sidled up close seeking pointers on how to run the U.S. into an even more diminished democracy. “He’s the boss, and that’s it,” Trump said.

 

Little Men Seeking Bigness

 

Trump has no formal authority as a former president but has managed to put his country into a precarious situation with his egotistical obstinance. After years of complaining by conservatives about a crisis at the border, Democrats and Republicans collaborated to create the strongest reforms in a half century. The Senate easily achieved passage of the measure and there is a wide majority for the same result in the House. Trump, however, realizes that if the problem is solved in a bipartisan agreement, he will be robbed of his lead issue. Consequently, he has told House Speaker Mike Johnson, a man who claims god told him he was to play the role of Moses in America, to not bring the legislation to a vote on the house floor, and Johnson has complied. Partisanship by the sycophantic constituency of Trump’s GOP has ground America to a halt.

We are also failing to keep our geopolitical promises. Speaker Moses, also at the behest of the non-president Trump, has blocked a funding measure that would re-arm Ukraine in its defense of the Russian invasion. The congressional stasis has NATO countries wondering about the reliability of the American commitment to the protection of Europe. While the house speaker seeks flattery from the putative dictator Trump, Ukraine is dying under assault with a constantly diminishing ability to respond militarily because of a lack of U.S. armaments. We continue, meanwhile, to become victims of our own military adventurism. The same funding legislation to help Ukraine would also continue the flow of weapons to Israel as it fights Hamas and razes Gaza. The IDF has averaged 100 deaths of children each day of the war, with a total dead of well over 30,000, and President Biden has yet to demand a cease fire from the Israelis. Instead, he has ordered the U.S. military to build a peer to deliver food and medicine to Palestinians suffering under the Israeli assault and he has set the plan in motion even as he continues to supply Israel with bombs, artillery, tanks, and jet fighters. The absurdity of the contradiction appears to escape most voters, and, apparently, the president.

Biden, however, does not lie like the sociopath Trump, and his party. After the president had defied critics and dark expectations of failure with his State of the Union Speech, the GOP’s response to his list of accomplishments came from an Alabama U.S. Senator. Even in 2024, Republicans thought it was a good idea to put an accomplished woman in her kitchen, wearing a diamond-encrusted cross, referring to getting dinner on the table, and whispering about the horrors of a Biden presidency. One of the stories she told, however, was a complete fabrication about drug cartels that had sex trafficked a woman in the “Del Rio Sector,” Border Patrol parlance for a stretch of the Rio Grande that is identified by that city’s name. Britt described the woman being raped and tortured and declared that this was not even acceptable in a Third World Country. “Enough is enough, Mr. President,” she said into the camera, addressing Biden. What she did not say is that the woman was not assaulted in the U.S. but was in Mexico and the crimes committed against her were back during the administration of George W. Bush. Lying used to put an end to a politician’s career but to lie and deny has become a widely accepted tactic in the age of Trump.

 

@katzonearth

This isn’t going to make her like TikTok more. #katiebritt #sotu #stateoftheunion #lies #politicians #biden2024 #trump2024 #immigration #traffickingawarenes #mexico #bordersecurity #fyp

♬ original sound – Jonathan M. Katz

 

Lies work, of course, and their abundance has proliferated after the Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court, which gave corporations the right to invest almost without restraint in politics. Most candidates are doomed when they are opposed by big business donors and the victims are usually progressive thinkers who expect a functioning government. What the electorate wants tends to have very little to do with what is desired by the corporatists and the political action committees they front. AIPAC, the American-Israeli Political Action Committee, as a single example, has committed to spending $100 million dollars to defeat congressional candidates who do not unilaterally support Israel and the genocide it is committing in Gaza. Israel’s disproportionate response to the October 7th Hamas attack is costing Mr. Biden support on the left, particularly in the swing states of Michigan and Minnesota, which may help lead to the restoration of Trump.

It has become rationalization to suggest Americans have confronted greater challenges and triumphed in glory but that ignores our long history of adventurism with meddlesome wars and overseas political manipulations and assassinations. The scions of the Bush family are largely responsible for the tensions and the fire and warfare burning across the Mideast today even though public memory is short and understanding of the lies that launched their invasions is minimal. We also ignore the inescapable fact that our involvement in Central America’s politics and economies has much to do with the sea of immigrants now presenting themselves at our gates, and that the problem with drug cartels is a consequence of our national appetite for their narcotics. Accepting responsibility is not a part of who we have become in this country. Our disfunction will lead to our end, if not corrected. The party out of power refuses to cooperate with the party in power and fires accusations of blame for every crisis. When the public finally listens, there is a new party in the majority and the displaced officeholders have no reason to cooperate with those who lied them out of office. Little in the way of governance is achieved.

We are a broken land.

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.

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James Moore is the New York Times bestselling author of “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential,” three other books on Bush and former Texas Governor Rick Perry, as well as two novels, and a biography entitled, “Give Back the Light,” on a famed eye surgeon and inventor. His newest book will be released mid- 2023. Mr. Moore has been honored with an Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his documentary work and is a former TV news correspondent who has traveled extensively on every presidential campaign since 1976.

He has been a retained on-air political analyst for MSNBC and has appeared on Morning Edition on National Public Radio, NBC Nightly News, Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, CBS Evening News, CNN, Real Time with Bill Maher, and Hardball with Chris Matthews, among numerous other programs. Mr. Moore’s written political and media analyses have been published at CNN, Boston Globe, L.A. Times, Guardian of London, Sunday Independent of London, Salon, Financial Times of London, Huffington Post, and numerous other outlets. He also appeared as an expert on presidential politics in the highest-grossing documentary film of all time, Fahrenheit 911, (not related to the film’s producer Michael Moore).

His other honors include the Dartmouth College National Media Award for Economic Understanding, the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television News Directors’ Association, the Individual Broadcast Achievement Award from the Texas Headliners Foundation, and a Gold Medal for Script Writing from the Houston International Film Festival. He was frequently named best reporter in Texas by the AP, UPI, and the Houston Press Club. The film produced from his book “Bush’s Brain” premiered at The Cannes Film Festival prior to a successful 30-city theater run in the U.S.

Mr. Moore has reported on the major stories and historical events of our time, which have ranged from Iran-Contra to the Waco standoff, the Oklahoma City bombing, the border immigration crisis, and other headlining events. His journalism has put him in Cuba, Central America, Mexico, Australia, Canada, the UK, and most of Europe, interviewing figures as diverse as Fidel Castro and Willie Nelson. He has been writing about Texas politics, culture, and history since 1975, and continues with political opinion pieces for CNN and regularly at his Substack newsletter: “Texas to the World.”

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16 Comments

  1. Whatever it takes to bamboozle, confuse, anger and ‘maintain the rage’ amongst low info uneducated and/or mass of ageing regional voters (see Oz, UK, Hungary etc.), getting at sentiments and beliefs for corrupt nativist authoritarianism for the <0.1%

    Ironically the pic is of PM ‘mini Putin’ Orban who indirectly employs Tony Abbott and his advisor at the Danube Institute (funded by a govt. linked foundation, partnered to and runs events with Koch’s Heritage) while the latter two claim to support Ukraine, really?

    Twitter/X never Trumper @BillKristol:

    ‘Heritage Foundation and Viktor Orbán are not simply against aid for Ukraine. They are against Ukraine. They hate Ukraine, because a) they’re pro-Putin, and b) they hate liberal democracy, especially one fighting to defend itself against a brutal dictator.’

    Suppose it helps deflect when employed by the Murdochs on the Fox Board, the UK Tories as a Trade Advisor, the Tufton St. GWPF of Atlas-Koch Network, US Christian (& allegedly Russian influence) nut jobs at ADF and migrant narratives of Tanton Network; too easy……

  2. Not for the first time, Andrew Smith recommends to readers the wisdom of Bill Kristol.

    Kristol is an American neoconservative writer. He played a leading role in the defeat of the Clinton health care plan of 1993. Kristol said the party should “kill,” not amend, President Clinton’s health care plan. A later memorandum used the phrase “There is no health care crisis.”

    He has been associated with a number of conservative think tanks, including the Emergency Committee for Israel.

    Kristol was a leading proponent of the Iraq War. In 1998 he and Robert Kagan wrote a New York Times piece where they said “bombing Iraq isn’t enough”
    He was a vocal supporter of the 2006 Israeli attack on Lebanon, stating that the war is “our war too,” referring to the United States. He favors a war with Iran.

    In 2007, David Corn of The Nation posted a list of Mr. Kristol’s pre-Iraq war statements about the justification for the war, the costs of the war, the planning for the war, and the consequences of the war. All the statements listed have since been shown to be wrong, leading Mr. Corn to conclude that “Kristol displayed little judgment or expertise…In an effectively functioning market of opinion-trading, Kristol’s views would be relegated to the bargain basement.”

    In response to an article here by James Moore that pleads for peace, pleads for an end to the US addiction to war, Andrew Smith quotes from one for whom too much war is barely enough. One whose views should “be relegated to the bargain basement.”

    Bill Maher summed it up nicely when he asked Kristol — Have you ever met a war you didn’t love?

  3. All I can see is that the US is far and away more about being the worlds Number 1 Weapons Shop than anything else. Make noises about the nastiness of war and in the same breath sell even more weapons.

  4. A great article of insight by James Moore.

    The USA now a very dangerous state being brought to collapse to kleptocratic authoritarianism.

    And very sad for the many very fine American citizens who have been disenfranchised and oppressed by the corrupted GOP and the corporatized freebooters and the mindless cowardly cashed-up neo-religious evangelists.

    These aforesaid corruptors and the Bannonites and their media flunkies have so mind-blown the American public that the uneducated and ill-informed stand no chance of understanding and even make Democrats go weak at the knees.

    A perfect environment for the deranged but lifelong skilled supreme conman, Trump, in his endless vengeance and quest for absolute power, wealth and dominion.

    The juggle for Biden against Trump’s wreckage GOP is a nightmare, exacerbated by Israel / Palestine (Gaza / West Bank). Biden’s ‘State of the Union’ speech was excellent, but probably not enough against the destructive wiles of Trump and his flunkies. Albeit I am encouraged by Biden inviting Benny Gantz to the Whitehouse, and yesterday saying Netanyahu’s policies and actions were hurting Israel.

    America is on the brink, and so the rest of the world, and there’s much time to pass and hell to pay before its federal elections.

    And then what?

  5. RIP Hugo Chavez, the powerful truth teller unafraid to tell the world the ugly and awful reality that is the modern USA hegemony intent on domination and maintaining its role as the world’s principal arms supplier.

  6. That photo at the top of the article made me think of a completely crazy old demented man who thinks he’s on a bus (or subway train) and holding onto a strap.

  7. Said crazy old demented man now manifesting dementia more frequently; confusing Obama for Biden, Haley for Pelosi, E Jean Carroll for his second wife Marla, Viktor Orban as being the leader of Türkiye, and much much more. Deranged, demented, dangerous, pathetic… and the brainwashed masses will elect this incoherent buffoon into the presidency. F^cking lunacy!

  8. Thanks Williambtn,

    Your link to Chossudovsky’s article provides for an interesting read. Most of which I have read before, but in lists, without the narratives.

    At this crucial time, of Russia / Ukraine and Israel / Palestine (Gaza) and friends, the stalling / non-presentation of bills in congress, Biden’s Israel history, and the imbroglio of madness; Trump / Biden leading into US elections in Nov. It provides a perspective of the bloody numbers game and ways and means of the US (and UK) imperium.

    Looking ahead, who will decide on the reconstruction spoils? Bannon and the Bannonites or the Gates via the captured UN?

    In the Ukraine, perhaps those that missed out in Iraq, the Europeans, oiled up by Russia;
    Siemens, ACS, Hochtief, VINCI, Bougues, Strabag, Selini, TechnipFMC, Balfour Beaty, Sanska, Effiage et al

    In Israel / Palestine, just a hop-step-and-jump from Iraqi works, perhaps those olde fossil-fuel boys looking for new liquidity and something to do;
    US Army Corps of Engineers, Halliburton, KBR, Flour Amec, Parsons, Sybian ….. etc.,
    NB: others may be busying themselves with the fruits of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

    Will there or will there not be Trump Towers everywhere? Who in the US really cares?

    “Come on down, you can’t go wrong!” [sarc]

  9. In Canada, there’s an appalling proliferation of over-reliance on food banks. Unmet food needs are/were exacerbated by unrelenting food-price inflation, while corporate profits and payouts to CEOs correspondingly inflate. Resultantly, many Canadians have to choose between which necessities they can afford: nutritious food or shelter.

    The more that such corporations make, all the more they want — nay, need! — to make next quarterly. It’s never enough.

    Maximizing profits at the expense of those with so much less, or nothing, will likely always be a significant part of the nature of the big business beast. And governments dare not intervene, lest they be publicly labeled by the corporate news-media [which is almost all of mainstream news outlets] as anti-business in our avidly capitalist culture.

    Meantime, such big businesses are getting unaccountably even bigger, defying the very spirit of government rules established to ensure healthy competition by limiting concentrated ownership.

    And while corporate officers shrug their shoulders and defensively say their job is only to protect shareholders’ bottom-line interests, the shareholders shrug their shoulders while defensively stating that they just collect the dividends and that the big bosses are the ones to make the moral and ethical decisions.

    Yet, the common yet questionable refrain incredibly still prevails amongst ‘free-market’ capitalist nation governments and corporate circles: It claims that best business practices, including what’s best for consumers, are best decided by business decision-makers. But this was proven false numerous times [e.g. Boeing’s 737 Max crashes, and big pharma’s push of very addictive opioids].

  10. [Cont.] Western virtual corpocracies ensure that any genuine socialist would be banned from just about everything in mainstream society, especially politics.

    A few victorious social/labor uprisings notwithstanding, notably the Bolshevik and French revolutions, it seems to me that the superfluously rich and powerful essentially have always had the police and military ready to foremost protect their power/money interests, even over the basic needs of the masses.

    Even today, the police and military can, and probably would, claim they must bust heads to maintain law and order as a priority; therefore, the absurdly unjust inequities and inequalities can persist.

    Thus, I can imagine there were/are lessons learned from those successful social/labor uprisings — a figurative How to Hinder Progressive Revolutions 101, perhaps? — with the clarity of hindsight by the big power/money interests in order to avoid any repeat of such great wealth/power losses.

    Indeed, any American president who, quite unlike Trump, seriously tried implementing truly humane, progressive policies — notably universal single-payer healthcare, a significant reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions, military spending, a genuine anti-war effort, and increasing the minimum wage while also reigning in Wall Street abuse/corruption [etcetera] — would likely be assassinated. Bernie Sanders as president comes to my mind as a good example of this.

    “If voting changed anything [in favor of the weak/poor/disenfranchised] they’d have made it illegal.”
    ‘Calamity’ Jane Bodine, Our Brand Is Crisis

  11. FSJ, a succinct observation on why capitalism is the root of all problems in societies that operate in accordance with that socio-economic paradigm. It beggars one’s imagination that when there are viable options, including governmental oversights that have the power and authority to bring a more humane and just system into play, one that takes into account the large variances in their citizens’ capacities to meet the inevitable costs involved by virtue of being embedded in such societies, that little to nothing is ever done to alleviate these financial burdens.

    It truly begs the question; for whom are governments beholden, if not to the people who put them into power?

  12. “I’m completely disillusioned with the famous United States. Everything is just for appearances, but underneath it all is nothing but crap.” Frida Kahlo, 1931.

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