Note: A new editor for the local rag, Lincoln County Leader, which was known for 100 years as the Newport News Times. The previous editor, Steve Card, who did 30 years in the journalistic trenches, left and retired. I was doubtful that my long-form op-eds would continue, but this month, today, July 16, it appeared. Thanks to the new editor. We shall see how long it lasts. However, it doesn’t appear on their on-line version, and thus, if you put in the title above and my name, it is nowhere to be found on the Internet. Google’s Goofy AI can’t find it either. There you go, another sort of Digital Death!
This email I received in my gmail box. With the following typical letter to me, my email, but who knows if he sent it to the editor, I may already be banned by the editor, and I will never know because these fellows never answer direct emails back.
Here, from that person who shall be unnamed, telling me …
All you do is criticize this country and the president, as if you are a spoil sport, mad that your guy didn’t win. My advice is leave. Go to Cuba, go to your great communist country of your choice. You do nothing for our community writing these screeds from your high horse. Love it or leave it is something I think everytime I read your junk. I’m shocked that some local patriot hasn’t read-ended your shitty mini-van or taken a swing at your smug face. Leave, and DO let the door hit you on your fucking anti-AmMerican ass.
Oh, well, my feelings aren’t hurt, but again, I’ve said this time and time again: I get people texting me thanking for my radio shows and my op-eds, but they just will not go on public record, i.e., a letter to the editor in support or agreement with me and my short “screeds.”
Today, with my Meals on Wheels gig and with my volunteer work at the senior center here, amazing social workers and folks with federal grants for their AmeriCorps workers lamenting about the Trumpism in the Senior Center — old flagging people, again, eating taxpayer paid for Meals on Wheels, and a Senior Center not just funded by local taxes, and these octogenarians no less, vaunting Trump, going on and on about, “well Obama and Clinton never served in the military either.”
That comment came after I had entertained them, made these people laugh, served them food and drinks and gave them to-go boxes, and then, well, someone mentioned cuts in the Meals on Wheels program here and nationwide, and then I stated that Trump is laughing at that, that he’s a mean gene, and wants my butt gone, and he’s especially laughing at “you older folk relying on Medicare and Meals on Wheels and who voted for him.”
I mentioned that Trump’s a felon and criminal and just a faker, among other things, and he is a wimp, who declared bone spurs as his out for military service. Yep, me, atheist and communist AND someone who spent time in the Army, man, sure, less than honorable discharge I got, but still, that, and then working with homeless veterans and even teaching college courses for various military outfits in my part-time faculty gigs.
These old people couldn’t square all those corners to the guy (me) who had just done all this service to the community work FOR them.
The social workers are tired. They are tired of people. They have family, and one I talked with, she even has a father who supports Trump Hands Down, like the freaks that in do. And, alas, I asked — Why no estrangement from these toxic folk in your life? These people, your fucking father, want you fired, essentially, because your AmeriCorps folk are being sacked because the grants have ended, and you too will be on the chopping block.
The system is winning when social workers hate people — not all, but most people, she told me — and when teachers hate their kiddos and the parents. This is what the design is all about — losing confidence in EVERYTHING except the price of toilet paper bundles at Costco.
More than just the Reagan way of getting people to believe government is too big, too cumbersome and too much an impediment in the American Way of Free-for-All Markets.
Chip chip chip those rotten democrats and republicans have enforced for decades.
Schizophrenia here by the Pew Research group:
Americans remain deeply distrustful of and dissatisfied with their government. Just 20% say they trust the government in Washington to do the right thing just about always or most of the time – a sentiment that has changed very little since former President George W. Bush’s second term in office.
The public’s criticisms of the federal government are many and varied. Some are familiar: Just 6% say the phrase “careful with taxpayer money” describes the federal government extremely or very well; another 21% say this describes the government somewhat well. A comparably small share (only 8%) describes the government as being responsive to the needs of ordinary Americans.
The federal government gets mixed ratings for its handling of specific issues. Evaluations are highly positive in some respects, including for responding to natural disasters (70% say the government does a good job of this) and keeping the country safe from terrorism (68%). However, only about a quarter of Americans say the government has done a good job managing the immigration system and helping people get out of poverty (24% each). And the share giving the government a positive rating for strengthening the economy has declined 17 percentage points since 2020, from 54% to 37%.
Yet Americans’ unhappiness with government has long coexisted with their continued support for government having a substantial role in many realms. And when asked how much the federal government does to address the concerns of various groups in the United States, there is a widespread belief that it does too little on issues affecting many of the groups asked about, including middle-income people (69%), those with lower incomes (66%) and retired people (65%).
*****
When participatory democracy never flourished, and when mutual aid is gone, and when people are doggedly dog-eat-dog and “I’ve got mine, so good luck getting yours” is the prevailing attitude, we are a disconnected “nation.”
Will this resonate?
For a decade, scholars, pundits and other analysts have been searching deep in the American political experience to understand why democracy seems so stressed. Now a new UC Berkeley report based on extensive surveys finds that Americans are confused about the meaning of democracy and frustrated with the leaders and institutions responsible for guiding the country — but also open to hope for repair.
In an interview, lead author David C. Wilson detailed the findings of this plunge into our political psyche, surveying a tangle of concerning trends. Americans are struggling with epidemic mistrust, but they’re also eager for solutions. For democracy to flourish, the report finds, its people must be flourishing, too.
Wilson, a political psychologist, offered a potentially innovative course of therapy: Just as the nation has economic and health policy, local, state and federal leaders need a commitment to democracy policy to strengthen the system and nurture commitment to democratic values and practices.
Wilson is the dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at Berkeley and a professor of public policy and political science. The report, “Delivering on the Promises of ‘We the People’,” is based on surveys of more than 2,400 Americans conducted before and after the November 2024 election.
The report was produced by the Goldman School’s Democracy Policy Lab.
*****
Snake Oil, PT Barnum and Postmortem for July 4
I remember telling my daughter, who never got to meet my old man, her grandfather, that I was diametrically opposed to his 32 years in the US military. I told her that I even ended up in Viet Nam two years before she was born to work with a science team from England.
I visited all parts of Viet Nam, after doing intensive biodiversity studies along the Laotian border.
She has some of my large prints of kiddos on motorcycles piled high with live chickens. She has a photo I took of a female Buddhist monk near where a more famous monk self-immolated in protest of the US and French-backed repressive South Vietnamese president.
That is Ho Chi Minh City, called Saigon back then.
It was just before 10 in the morning on June 11, 1963, when 300 monks and nuns marched down a busy Saigon street. This 73-year-old monk named Thich Quang Duc emerged from a car at this crowded intersection and sat down in the lotus position on a cushion. Two fellow monks poured gasoline from a five-gallon can. As the fuel was emptied over his head, Duc chanted, “Nam mo amita Buddha,” — “return to eternal Buddha.”
Sixty years later a similar event was repeated here in the USA, although in this intentionally amnesiac and superficial society, it seems like a distant memory. But my friend from Wisconsin talks of this hero much.
That distant memory occurred just over a year ago—February 25, 2024. Remember? Twenty-five-year-old Air Force serviceman Aaron Bushnell died after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington in an act of protest against the Gaza genocide.
Less than two years ago, and I have students who are afraid of calling “it” a genocide. I have fellow faculty in many parts of the country who are not just chastised for supporting innocent Palestinians but are fired.
Is this newspaper going to get the “hammer” or “ax” for republishing Aaron’s words before he set himself on fire?
“I am an active-duty member of the United States Air Force. And I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest. But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers—it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”
The last words of his life were ‘Free Palestine.’
Recall my professional soldier — CW4 — father. He was a 19-year-old in the so-called Korean Conflict, wounded there. He was then made a chief warrant officer in the Army and took his family to Paris, France, and Hamburg as part of his work.
He was shot in the chest in a Huey helicopter in Viet Nam with his blackbox of codes handcuffed to his wrist. He was 36 years old, and he survived.
I went to Viet Nam at age 36, leaving my home of El Paso behind. I visited villages near where my old man’s team set up communication towers and signal corps facilities.
I was against that illegal war when I was still in junior high school.
My father was a smart guy with graduate degrees in history and education. He always wanted me to go to college, and he supported my journalism and science studies at the University of Arizona. He read my newspaper articles.
What he was for — as a first-generation American whose father was a WWI pilot in the Kaiser’s Navy — included expanded services for the poor, safety nets for the elderly, massive cheap public services to include health care for all, seven-day-a-week libraries, a post office that handled payroll and served as a credit union.
He wanted more state and national parks. He was a Republican, and I was a Ralph Nader independent who was deeply leftist. As left as the liberators of Viet Nam under Ho Chi Minh.
Oh, if CW4 Marvin Haeder was alive today, man oh man. He knew European history and the history of the world, so having this perfume salesperson as his commander in chief would have chaffed him. Bone spur deferment from military service, Donald professed?
PT Barnum may have said: “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Trump is that purveyor and protector of rip-off artists.
My old man supported expanded prosecution of grifters ripping off old people in all industries and services. He was for expanded consumer rights and expanded rights to unionize.
These were his Republican values, with his two bronze stars, purple hearts and 32 years in combined AF and Army service.
He was once an airman too, as we lived on Terceira Island in the Azores outside 65th Air Base Wing at Lajes Field.
Now, POTUS is selling perfume. Trump’s perfume is called “Victory 45-47” because “they’re all about Winning, Strength, Success.”
Everywhere in Lincoln County the silence — as I stated in a previous Op-Ed — is deafening. Active genocide of the Holocaust variety, and people just go on with their rah-rah Fourth of July lives. We’ve been sold a bill of goods. Amnesia? Dis-education? Worse?
I recommend David Swanson’s website where you can peruse collected sources on how much snake oil we’ve consumed. You won’t like this last paragraph on David’s website, so try studying it:
“Since World War II, during a supposed golden age of peace, the United States military has killed or helped kill some 20 million people, overthrown at least 36 governments, interfered in at least 86 foreign elections, attempted to assassinate over 50 foreign leaders, and dropped bombs on people in over 30 countries. The United States is responsible for the deaths of 5 million people in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and over 1 million just since 2003 in Iraq.”
***** The End *****
The U.S. government provides weapons, military training, and/or military funding to almost every dictatorship and oppressive government on earth. See my 2020 book 20 Dictators Currently Supported by the U.S.
U.S. weapons are used on both sides of many wars.
In an attempt to quantify U.S. warmaking, I’ve copied below lists from these sources:
David Vine: The United States of War
William Blum: America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy
Dr. Zoltan Grossman: A Century of U.S. Military Interventions
James Lucas: U.S. Has Killed More Than 20 Million People
William Appleman Williams: Empire As a Way of Life
I can link to some others first. Here is a PDF from 2022 from the U.S. Congressional Research Service admitting to hundreds of U.S. military interventions abroad between 1798 and 2022.
And here is a PDF of a journal article about something called the Military Intervention Project, which can also be found here and here and here. The authors claim to have a list of 392 U.S. military interventions between 1776 and 2019, but do not seem to actually produce the list. There are, however, extensive descriptions of it at those links, including:
“The United States has carried out 34 percent of its 392 interventions against countries in Latin America and the Caribbean; 23 percent in East Asia and the Pacific region; 14 percent in the Middle East and North Africa; and just 13 percent in Europe and Central Asia, according to a newly refined version of the Military Intervention Project (MIP) dataset — a venture of the Center for Strategic Studies at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.”
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.