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Sunday, October 15, 2017
Weekend Roundup
Every week since January has featured multiple stories about how
Donald Trump (and/or the Republicans) are corrupting government,
undermining democracy, degrading our short- and long-term economic
prospects, and quite often endangering world peace. Still, most of
those stories could be understood as some combination of the greed,
demagoguery, and narrow-minded ignorance that constitutes what passes
as the conservative world-view. But some things happened this week
that makes me think Trump has crossed a previously unknown line into
a qualitatively new level of, well, I'm groping for words, trying to
avoid "evil," so let's call it derangement. The US withdrawal from
UNESCO was the first such story, followed by the trashing of the
agreement with Iran to terminate their "nuclear program," but then
there was Trump's executive order to undermine Obamacare -- an act
of pure spite following the Republican failure to repeal the ACA.
As Ezra Klein's tweet explains:
Trump's new policy will increase premiums by 20%, cost the government
$194 billion, increase the deficit, destabilize insurance markets, and
increase the number of uninsured Americans. There is nothing it makes
better; it's pure policy nihilism.
Sure, I've often felt like Republicans generated their policy ideas
from a deep well of spite and vindictiveness, with scant concern for
consequences because deep down they really didn't give a shit about
anyone other than themselves (actually, a small subset of the fools
they manipulating into voting for them). But usually you could also
discern a positive slant, like their fondness for helping predatory
businesses rip everyone else off. Trump certainly isn't beyond that,
especially for his own businesses, but he mostly leaves such matters
to his subordinates -- after all, their experience in business and
lobbies gives them a command of detail he lacks, as well as motives
he doesn't disapprove of.
That's should have left Trump free to focus on "big picture" items,
but not understanding them either, he's been preoccupied with petty
feuds and tone-deaf publicity stunts, but his hatred for Obama is so
great that he'll gladly sign any executive order that wipes out any
hint of his predecessor's legacy. That's the source of much of his
policy nihilism, although he's occasionally broken new ground, as
with his UNESCO withdrawal -- ending 72 years of more/less trying to
work with the rest of the world's nations for the common good.
I suppose what this really means is that for the first time since
he took office, I've come around to the view that Trump is actually
worse than the run-of-the-mill Republicans in Congress and now in his
cabinet and office. I've long resisted that view, partly because the
media bend over backwards to excuse and legitimize the latter, and
partly because even though I disapprove of Trump's obvious character
flaws (e.g., racism, sexism, xenophobia, vanity, violence, mendacity,
ostentatiousness, sheer greed) I prefer to judge people on what they
do rather than what they think or believe. (Indeed, those flaws are
pretty common in America, but most people have enough of a superego
to try to limit their exposure and maintain social decorum -- Trump,
as is becoming more obvious every day, does not.)
On the other hand, let's not forget that Trump started to wander
off after giving his little rant about Obamacare, and it was Mike
Pence who grabbed him by the sleeve and dragged him back to actually
sign the executive order. That's an image to keep in mind if, say,
Trump is finally dispatched as too much of an embarrassment -- and
here I have to agree with Steve Bannon that the odds favor a cabinet
coup using the 25th amendment to Congress taking the more arduous
road to impeachment.
Some scattered links this week:
Aaron Blake: Almost half of Republicans want war with North Korea, a new
poll says. Is it the Trump Effect? Actually, a plurality, 46-41% in
favor of a preemptive strike against North Korea. Other polls produce
different results, possibly depending on how the question is phrased.
I doubt if even 1% of the Republicans polled have any understanding of
North Korea's preparations for responding to such an attack, hence of
the risks and likely costs of starting a war there. On the other hand,
one may expect Mattis, Tillerson, and the upper ranks of the uniformed
to at least have some idea: thousands of pieces of artillery that can
reach Seoul (population 10 million, metro area 25 million), the range
of rockets that can reach further (up to the US mainland), a few dozen
nuclear warheads (some with hydrogen boost), the vast array of defensive
tunnels, one of the largest military forces in the world. The latest
assessment I've seen is that the US would prevail in such a war (assuming
China does not intervene, as it did in 1950), but it wouldn't be easy
and the costs would be great. Tillerson was recently quoted as saying
he'll continue negotiating "until the first bomb falls" -- it's hard
to take much comfort in that given that Trump's been quoted as saying
his Secretary of State is wasting his time. Moreover, see
Choe Sang-Hun: North Korean Hackers Stole U.S.-South Korean Military
Plans, Lawmaker Says, including a "decapitation plan" for an
attack targeting Kim Jong-Un. Also note the report that
Trump Wanted Tenfold Increase in U.S. Nuclear Arsenal -- while
beyond ridiculous, such a report would play directly into North Korea's
paranoia. Indeed, Trump is playing Nixon's
Madman theory much more convincingly than the Trickster ever did.
(For a recent review, see
Garrett M Graff: The Madman and the Bomb. Among other things, this
article points out how elated Trump was in ordering the "Mother of All
Bombs" dropped in Afghanistan, adding "All the previous worries about
the potential of a deranged president to use a nuclear button irrationally
have been multiplied.") Lately Trump has made a number of bold unilateral
moves, evidently meant to reassure his base that he can act dramatically
on their prejudices. The more he senses support for striking North Korea,
the more likely he is to do it.
Tina Brown: What Harvey and Trump have in common: Harvey is Weinstein,
the movie mogul and current poster boy for serial sexual abuse. Brown left
her job at The New Yorker to work for him, and this is what she
found out:
What I learned about Harvey in the two years of proximity with him at
Talk was that nothing about his outward persona, the beguiling Falstaffian
charmer who persuaded -- or bamboozled -- me into leaving The New Yorker
and joining him, was the truth. He is very Trumpian in that regard.
He comes off as a big, blustery, rough diamond kind of a guy, the kind
of old-time studio chief who lives large, writes big checks and exudes
bonhomie. Wrong. The real Harvey is fearful, paranoid, and hates being
touched (at any rate, when fully dressed).
Winning, for him, was a blood sport. Deals never close. They are
renegotiated down to the bone after the press release. A business meeting
listening to him discuss Miramax deals in progress reminded me of the wire
tap transcripts of John Gotti and his inner circle at the Bergin Hunt and
Fish Club in Queens. "So just close it fast, then fuck him later with the
subsidiary rights." . . .
Harvey is an intimidating and ferocious man. Crossing him, even now,
is scary. But it's a different era now. Cosby. Ailes. O'Reilly, Weinstein.
It's over, except for one -- the serial sexual harasser in the White House.
For more Weinstein dirt, see
Ronan Farrow: From Aggressive Overtures to Sexual Assault: Harvey
Weinstein's Accusers Tell Their Stories. As for Trump, see:
Jessica Garrison/Kendall Taggart: Trump Given a Subpoena for All Documents
Relating to Assault Allegations.
Daniel José Camacho: Trump's marriage to the religious right reeks of
hypocrisy on both sides: Well, sure, but hypocrisy is an old friend
of Christianity in every stage of American history, and you can probably
find prime examples at least as far back as Constantine, who realized
how useful the religion could be for sanctifying his own political power.
Christianity is, above all else, a remarkably forgiving religion, as
long as you attest to its power by begging for its mercy. In country
music, for instance, whatever you do on Saturday Night can be atoned
for and made right on Sunday Morning, and the latter is all that really
matters to the clergy -- after all, confession confirms their authority.
The political right has never had a problem with that. They love the
idea of hierarchy so much they strive to emulate it on earth, ruled,
of course, by themselves, conferring favors upon their favored clergy.
Of course, if you don't buy into this arrangement, your cynicism may
lead you to charge them with hypocrisy. Indeed, the whole scam is as
easy to see through as "The Emperor's New Clothes," but that only makes
the believers more angry and vindictive -- hence, the rise of the
Religious Right parallels liberal secularization, with its increasing
militancy (and, looking at Trump, I'm inclined to add desperation)
bound up with a feeling of embattled isolation that right-wing media
and politicians have cynically encouraged. Still, the problem is less
Christian backlash against secular culture -- something that is real
but deeper and more complex than the political backlash it is often
confused with[*] -- than that con artists from Reagan to Trump have often
managed to wrap their scams up in various traditional pieties, as if
that excuses otherwise shameless behavior.
[*] Note that Christianity predates capitalism, so contains a strain
of anti-materialist sentiment that has never been fully reconciled with
modern commerce. It even predates Constantine's state religion, before
which it was resolutely anti-state and anti-war, so even today a large
segment of the peace movement finds its inspiration in religion (and
not just Christianity).
William D Hartung: Here's Where Your Tax Dollars for 'Defense' Are Really
Going:
The answer couldn't be more straightforward: It goes directly to private
corporations and much of it is then wasted on useless overhead, fat
executive salaries, and startling (yet commonplace) cost overruns on
weapons systems and other military hardware that, in the end, won't
even perform as promised. Too often the result is weapons that aren't
needed at prices we can't afford. If anyone truly wanted to help the
troops, loosening the corporate grip on the Pentagon budget would be
an excellent place to start.
The numbers are staggering. In fiscal year 2016, the Pentagon issued
$304 billion in contract awards to corporations -- nearly half of the
department's $600 billion-plus budget for that year. And keep in mind
that not all contractors are created equal. According to the Federal
Procurement Data System's top 100 contractors report for 2016, the
biggest beneficiaries by a country mile were Lockheed Martin ($36.2
billion), Boeing ($24.3 billion), Raytheon ($12.8 billion), General
Dynamics ($12.7 billion), and Northrop Grumman ($10.7 billion). Together,
these five firms gobbled up nearly $100 billion of your tax dollars,
about one-third of all the Pentagon's contract awards in 2016. . . .
The arms industry's investment in lobbying is even more impressive.
The defense sector has spent a total of more than $1 billion on that
productive activity since 2009, employing anywhere from 700 to 1,000
lobbyists in any given year. To put that in perspective, you're talking
about significantly more than one lobbyist per member of Congress, the
majority of whom zipped through Washington's famed "revolving door";
they moved, that is, from positions in Congress or the Pentagon to
posts at weapons companies from which they could proselytize their
former colleagues.
The weapons systems are the big ticket items, but there is much more,
including some 600,000 private contractors doing all sorts of things,
with little effective management, while companies like Erik Prince's
Blackwater lobby to privatize more combat jobs.
Sean Illing: 20 of America's top political scientists gathered to discuss
our democracy. They're scared. Many interesting idea here; e.g.:
Nancy Bermeo, a politics professor at Princeton and Harvard, began her
talk with a jarring reminder: Democracies don't merely collapse, as that
"implies a process devoid of will." Democracies die because of deliberate
decisions made by human beings.
Usually, it's because the people in power take democratic institutions
for granted. They become disconnected from the citizenry. They develop
interests separate and apart from the voters. They push policies that
benefit themselves and harm the broader population. Do that long enough,
Bermeo says, and you'll cultivate an angry, divided society that pulls
apart at the seams. . . .
Due to wage stagnation, growing inequalities, automation, and a
shrinking labor market, millions of Americans are deeply pessimistic
about the future: 64 percent of people in Europe believe their children
will be worse off than they were; the number is 60 percent in America.
That pessimism is grounded in economic reality. In 1970, 90 percent
of 30-year-olds in America were better off than their parents at the
same age. In 2010, only 50 percent were. Numbers like this cause people
to lose faith in the system. What you get is a spike in extremism and
a retreat from the political center. That leads to declines in voter
turnout and, consequently, more opportunities for fringe parties and
candidates. . . .
Consider this stat: In 1960, 5 percent of Republicans and 4 percent
of Democrats objected to the idea of their children marrying across
political lines. In 2010, those numbers jumped to 46 percent and 33
percent respectively. Divides like this are eating away at the American
social fabric. . . .
But for all the reasons discussed above, people have gradually
disengaged from the status quo. Something has cracked. Citizens have
lost faith in the system. The social compact is broken. So now we're
left to stew in our racial and cultural resentments, which paved the
way for a demagogue like Trump.
One thing I would stress here is that "the erosion of democratic
norms" -- voter suppression, gerrymandering, obstruction tactics,
tolerance for "dirty tricks," the ever-increasing prerogatives of
money -- has largely been spawned within the Republican Party, which
is to say the party most desperately committed to inequality, order,
privilege, and hierarchy. The article offers stats about the growing
number of Americans who look favorably on a military dictatorship,
but neglects to break them down by party. Still, it's worth noting
that Democrats have often played into the hands of anti-democratic
forces, especially those who have been most successful at toadying
for donors. Although Obama, for instance, campaigned against the
baleful influence of money in 2008, he managed to raise so much more
of it than McCain, so Democrats didn't bother to use their majorities
to address the issue.
Sarah Jaffe: Bernie Sanders Isn't Winning Local Elections for the Left:
"Bernie Wins Birmingham" is convenient shorthand for those who have no idea
what actually goes on in Birmingham. But Bernie Sanders and the group his
2016 campaign inspired, Our Revolution, are not winning elections in places
like Birmingham or Jackson, Mississippi, which in June elected a mayor who's
promised, "I'll make Jackson the most radical city on the planet." Activists
in Birmingham and Jackson and Albuquerque and Long Island are winning them --
left-wing activists who've toiled for years in the trenches, working with a
new wave of organizers from Black Lives Matter and other insurgent groups,
who bring social-media savvy and fired-up young voters into the mix.
Still, the title leans too hard the opposite way. Bernie is helping,
especially to provide a nationwide support framework. Conversely, helping
build local power bases helps build the nationwide movement, either for
Bernie (who certainly could have used some local help in Mississippi and
Alabama during the 2016 primaries) or whoever vies most successfully for
his movement. Conversely, although Hillary may have given up her dream
of running in 2020, her crowd is still more focused on containing (or
combatting) the left than on winning elections: see
Bob Moser: Clintonian Democrats Are Peddling Myths to Cling to Power.
Anyone who bothers to remember McGovern's tragic 1972 loss to Nixon
should heap shame on those Democrats who betrayed their party's nominee
for the most devious and crooked politician in American history -- much
more numerous than the tiny fraction of Sanders supporters who couldn't
stomach Clinton in 2016. The so-called New Democrats have discredited
themselves doubly: first by repeatedly surrendering the Party's New
Deal/Great Society legacy to increasingly regressive Republicans in the
name of political expediency, then by losing to the vilest candidate
the GOP could muster.
Fred Kaplan: Certifiable Nonsense: As usual with Slate, the link
title is better: "President Trump's Most Dishonest Speech Yet," adding
"His announcement on the Iran deal might also be his most dangerous
speech yet." Certainly true about his dishonesty, even though there's
lots of competition. But most dangerous? More dangerous than his
taunting of North Korea, which actually has nuclear warheads as well
as more powerful missiles? Well, the two are related:
Pulling out would also damage our posture, and possibly trigger catastrophe,
in other global hot spots. If our face-off with North Korea is to end without
war, it will require some sort of diplomatic settlement. But who will want
to negotiate with the United States, and who would believe any deal Trump
would sign or guarantee he would make, if he pulls out of the Iran deal,
even though Iran is abiding by its terms?
Also see:
Sarah Kliff: Trump's acting like Obamacare is just politics. It's people's
lives. This is the piece Klein linked to in his tweet above, so it
starts by spelling out the bottom line. One key thing Trump's order does
is to end payments to insurance companies protecting against losses due
to adverse selection. This wouldn't be a problem in a single-payer system
with truly universal coverage, but splitting the market into multiple
segments means that some will be cost more than others. If insurance
companies had to bear that risk, some would drop out and the rest would
raise their prices. And that's exactly what they will do under Trump's
executive order.
Ending these payments raises premiums for anyone who uses Obamacare:
older people, younger people, sicker people, and healthy people. And
it puts an already fragile Obamacare marketplace at greater risk of
a last-minute exodus by health plans who assumed that the government
would pay these subsidies -- and don't think they can weather the
financial hit.
The Trump administration has, since taking office, cut the Obamacare
open enrollment period in half. Instead of 90 days to sign up, enrollees
will now get 45. The Trump administration has cut the Obamacare advertising
budget by 90 percent -- and reduced funding for in-person outreach by 40
percent. Regional branches of Health and Human Services abruptly pulled
out of the outreach events they have participated in over the last four
years. . . .
Trump's larger presidential agenda has focused on unwinding Barack
Obama's legacy. He's more focused on destroying his nemesis than trying
to replace, to fix, or to improve Obama's biggest accomplishments from
the Iran deal to environmental regulation.
On health care, there are going to be immediate and very real
consequences for Americans. There are real people who stand to be hurt
by an administration that has actively decided to make a public benefits
program function poorly.
Also see:
Michael Kruse: The Power of Trump's Positive Thinking: Yet another
attempt to plumb Trump's psyche, trying to impose order on a mental
process that strikes most of us as supremely chaotic:
"I've had just about the most legislation passed of any president, in
a nine-month period, that's ever served," he said this week in an interview
with Forbes, contradicting objective metrics and repeating his
frequent and dubious assertion of unprecedented success throughout the
first year of his first term as president.
The reality is that Trump is in a rut. His legislative agenda is
floundering. His approval ratings are historically low. He's raging
privately while engaging in noisy, internecine squabbles. He's increasingly
isolated. And yet his fact-flouting declarations of positivity continue
unabated. For Trump, though, these statements are not issues of right or
wrong or true or false. They are something much more elemental. They are
a direct result of the closest thing the stubborn, ideologically malleable
celebrity businessman turned most powerful person on the planet has ever
had to a devout religious faith. This is not his mother's flinty Scottish
Presbyterianism but Norman Vincent Peale's "power of positive thinking,"
the utterly American belief in self above all else and the conviction that
thoughts can be causative, that basic assertion can lead to actual
achievement. . . .
What Peale peddled was "a certain positive, feel-good religiosity
that demands nothing of you and rewards you with worldly riches and
success," said Princeton University historian Kevin Kruse, the author
of One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian
America. "It's a self-help gospel . . . the name-it-and-claim-it
gospel." . . .
Peale, then nearly 80 years old, officiated Trump's wedding in 1977.
In 1983, shortly after the opening of Trump Tower, Trump credited Peale
for instilling in him a can-do ethos.
The piece cites various critiques of various self-help pitches,
some of which fit Trump to a tee, then notes that no one who has
been studied has anywhere near the power Trump has, so "the Trump
presidency is uncharted territory." Of course, Peale is only one
significant influence on Trump's thinking and behavior. There's
also Roy Cohn, a very different and much more nefarious mentor.
And there's Trump's Nazi/KKK-aligned father, and probably a few
more. Some writer could build a great novel out of such clay.
Unfortunately, the real thing isn't a work of fiction.
Dara Lind: Leaked memos show Jeff Sessions's DOJ aims to undermine due
process for immigrants. Sessions is one of those "public servants" in
the Trump administration that's willing to overlook getting tweet-slapped
by Trump because he has important agenda work to do. This is one prime
example (others include ending civil rights and antitrust enforcement).
James Mann: The Adults in the Room: A piece on how the generals
(Kelly, Mattis, McMaster) and Boy Scout (Tillerson) Trump has surrounded
himself with are keeping the ship of state afloat, their "maturity" in
sharp contrast to the president's lack thereof:
Following the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House, the meaning
of the words "adult" and "grownup" has undergone a subtle but remarkable
shift. They now refer far more to behavior and character than to views
on policy. This is where Kelly, McMaster, Mattis, and (to a lesser extent)
Tillerson come in; "grownup" is the behavioral role that we have assigned
to them.
For the first time, America has a president who does not act like an
adult. He is emotionally immature: he lies, taunts, insults, bullies,
rages, seeks vengeance, exalts violence, boasts, refuses to accept
criticism, all in ways that most parents would seek to prevent in their
own children. Thus the dynamic was established in the earliest days of
the administration: Trump makes messes, or threatens to make them, and
Americans look to the "adults" to clean up for him. The "adults," in
turn, send out occasional little public signals that they are trying to
keep Trump from veering off course -- to educate him, to make him grow
up, to keep him under control. When all else fails, they simply distance
themselves from his tirades. Sometimes such efforts are successful; on
many occasions, they aren't.
Leaving aside the question whether Trump's immaturity is a matter
of his spoiled upbringing, sociopathy, or some kind of dementia (what
we usually mean when we speak of people his age undergoing "a second
childhood"), what I find most incongruous here is the notion that we
should consider generals to be grown-ups. We are, after all, talking
about people who dress up in uniforms with flashy medals, who prance
about and play with guns or, at their rank, maneuver soldiers around
battlefields. Those are all things that I enjoyed in my pre-teens but
rapidly grew out of, especially as I became conscious of the very grim
and senseless war my country was fighting in Vietnam. Ever since then,
I figured those who pursued military careers to be stuck in some kind
of adolescence, at least until PTSD disabuses them of their fantasies.
Maybe generals are different, although I don't see why, and I doubt
they often function well outside of the closed system that selected
them. (Tillerson, of course, didn't fall for the military fantasy, but
he got a taste of the worldview in the Boy Scouts, and his advancement
through the ranks of Exxon was every bit as cloistered -- something we
see in his performance as Secretary of State.)
I also couldn't help but notice this piece:
Eric Scigliano: The Book Mattis Reads to Be Prepared for War With
North Korea. The book is T.R. Fehrenbach's This Kind of War,
originally published in 1963, evidently focused on the importance of
putting "boots on the ground" while recognizing how little America's
scorched earth air bombardment had accomplished. No idea what lessons
Mattis draws from this, other than ego-stroking from a fellow Marine.
As I recall, the first thing I read about Mattis (back in early Iraq
War days) stressed what an intellectual he was, with his vast library
of war books. I flashed then on Robert Sherrill's book title, Military
Justice Is to Justice as Military Music Is to Music, and figured
"military intellectuals" were likely to be similarly debased.
Donald Macintyre: Tony Blair: 'We were wrong to boycott Hamas after its
election win': Only eleven years too late. I don't recall whether
Blair has issued his mea culpa for the Iraq War or any of the
dozens of other things he's famously screwed up, but it's worth noting
this one. One thing we should always work toward is getting groups to
lay down their arms and work to advance their cause through an electoral
framework. The Hamas electoral victory in 2006 offered an opportunity to
restart the "peace process" that Barak and Sharon aborted in 2000, with
broader Palestinian representation than was ever possible under Arafat.
Of course, Sharon wanted no part in any peace process, and Blair and
Bush sheepishly went along, not simply adding more than a decade to the
conflict but allowing Israel's illegal settlement actions to sink ever
deeper roots into the West Bank.
Andrew Restuccia: Bannon promises 'season of war' against McConnell, GOP
establishment: Specifically, "to challenge any Senate Republican who
doesn't publicly condemn attacks on President Donald Trump." On the one
hand, I'm tempted to say, "let the bloodletting begin"; on the other,
while it will be easy to characterize Bannon's insurgents as extremists,
his willingness to challenge oligarchy gives him a potential popularity
that establishment Republicans as Mitch McConnell lack. Bannon argues
here that "money doesn't matter anymore" -- while that's certainly not
true, his "grass roots organizing" was able to negate Hillary's huge
fundraising advantage. Seemingly unrelated, also note that:
[Bannon] also appeared to hint that the administration was planning to
soon declare that the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization
and move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, perhaps as soon as
next week.
But a senior administration official disputed that such an announcement
was in the works for next week.
Philip Rucker/Ed O'Keefe: Trump threatens to abandon Puerto Rico recovery
effort: Among the many things Trump has threatened to blow up this
past week, one of the most vexing is the quasi-colonial relationship of
the US to Puerto Rico. Trump has vacillated between taking responsibility
for recovery and attempting to disown the island, to write it off like
one of his bad debts. Here he declares Puerto Rico's infrastructure a
disaster before the storm. There he lectures on the sanctity of debts
accured by state and local government there. Political sentiment in the
US generally favors aid, but I suspect his base is more antagonistic.
The banks, on the other hand, would probably prefer a bailout before
anything drastic happens. Puerto Ricans recently voted for statehood,
which Republicans in Congress are likely to block if they think there's
any reason -- like a racist, xenophobic president -- doing so might not
add to the GOP majority. Indeed, Trump has already started to follow
through on his threats to withdraw aid by allowing a temporary waiver
to the Jones Act to expire.
Meanwhile, a couple recent reports from Puerto Rico:
Gabriel Sherman: "I Hate Everyone in the White House!": Trump Seethes as
Advisers Fear the President Is "Unraveling":
Stephen Colbert's comment on this headline was: "This means up until
now, he's been raveled." Inside you get lines like "One former official
even speculated that Kelly and Secretary of Defense James Mattis have
discussed what they would do in the event Trump ordered a nuclear first
strike." And: "According to a source, Bannon has told people he thinks
Trump has only a 30 percent chance of making it the full term." All very
gossipy. Too much smoke to tell where the fire actually is.
Emily Shugerman: US withdraws from Unesco over 'anti-Israel bias':
"The US helped found Unesco in the wake of the Second World War, with
the aim of ensuring peace through the free flow of ideas and education."
I found this shocking, even though it's long been clear that the US has
its most anti-education and anti-free speech administration in history,
and possibly its most anti-peace one as well. The most disturbing thing
here is the extent to which anti-UN prejudice has permeated Republican
ideology (and make no mistake about it, this is a purely partisan view).
But even as a go-it-alone (i.e., isolationist) "America first" stance,
it's pretty self-deprecating: if the stated rationale is true, this as
much as admits that tiny Israel has taken charge of US foreign policy;
the alternative theory, that "Mr Tillerson simply wanted to stem outgoings,"
also reflects poorly on the US, as much as admitting that "the richest
country in the world" can't afford to contribute to preserving heritage
and supporting education in poorer countries. Pieces by Matthew Yglesias this week:
Special bonus link:
Dalia Mortada: A Taste of Syria: A recipe for a Syrian dish, fatteh,
"a hearty dish of crispy pita bread beneath chickpeas and a luscious
garlic-yogurt-tahini sauce." I should note that the picture appears to
have a sprinkling of ground sumac (or maybe Aleppo pepper) not listed
in the recipe.
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