Friday, January 10, 2020

Stirring World Events


The Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday passed a non-binding War Powers Resolution that would prohibit President Donald Trump from taking further military action against Iran without first gaining congressional approval.
The resolution—officially House Concurrent Resolution 83—was passed 224-194, largely along party lines with just three Republicans and one Independent joining with Democrats in favor of the measure. While eight Democrats voted against the resolution, four others did not vote. Read the full roll call here.
I can't help but remember when the Republican controlled Congress voted against Obama's call for military action against Libya. (Obama decided to attack Libya anyway. And the Republicans would have called him "weak" if he hadn't called for an attack on Libya. They would have screwed him either way.)

It's never clear how much of these US military actions, and the debates over them, are about US presidents seeking political gain and their oppositions basing their responses on partisan issues.

What is not at issue though is that there are dozens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of real human beings, whose lives are being devastated by the political games of these super-corrupt, amoral psychopaths. 

I mean, look at the main players of this pissing contest: A repulsive ageing grifter with a combover named Donald Trump and an alcoholic, botoxed, out-of-touch oligarch named Nancy Pelosi.

The United States has been too powerful for too long. That pathetic specimens of humanity such as Trump and Pelosi can play with the lives of so many people in their ignorant, partisan, navel-gazing contests with zero consequences. 

Now, certainly, at least some of those Democrats who voted against war with Iran did so out of conscience. And maybe a few of those Republicans who opposed Obama based their decision on consistent moral principles. But as Glenn Greenwald once said, Democratic leaders (like the revolting Hillary Clinton) often have very flexible views about what is right and what is wrong.

Here she is on critics of her and Obama's attack on Libya:

But the bottom line is, whose side are you on? Are you on Qadhafi’s side or are you on the side of the aspirations of the Libyan people and the international coalition that has been created to support them? For the Obama Administration, the answer to that question is very easy.

But here she was maintaining the citizenry's right to criticize the wars of Republican george dubya bush:

I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriotic, and we should stand up and say, 'WE ARE AMERICANS AND WE HAVE A RIGHT TO DEBATE AND DISAGREE WITH ANY ADMINISTRATION!'

And Greenwald's critical eye is the main reason why partisan Democratic blogger "Driftglass" is always reduced to pathetic whining whenever he thinks about him.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't know how I managed to miss you in the blogosphere. Anyway, I read back a year and find myself in quite strong agreement with your stances.

I've been thoroughly disappointed with most of Progressive Bloggers of late. Quoting some dork of an economist from the New York Times like Krugman impresses me not. Neither does eulogizing over Monbiot and quoting the Guardian, whose editor-in-chief led the anti-Corbyn dunces labelling him as an anti-Semite. Then I get Teddy Roosevelt laid on me as some paragon of virtue because of his white man conservation hobby, when in reality his administration sent troops to the Philipines and murdered at a minimum 20,000, taking the place over as a US colony.

In fact, progressives dun Canadian media yet somehow believe in some twisted-mind way that the NYT is sacrosanct and the Grauniad is fine too. It's like the syndrome where we don't recognize Canadian acting talent until they make it big in the USA.

Also, the stunned-brain belief in the Steele (He wrote it over a weekend and made big money) dossier, Hillary having the election stolen from her by the "Electoral College" and elevation of Mueller to saint status over Russiagate investigations betrayed a complete lack of reading any alternative press views that challenged their hope-against-hope that the Democrats were lovely, kind and gentle people, and not the basis of neocons and State Dept lifetime policy defenders of the USA's predations as global hegemon. And they also seem au fait with the dastardly Freeland who is as anti-indigenous as it is possible to be in her Latin American dealings, and is now deputy PM to Trudeau. Jesus. Watch those pipelines grow at the point of a barrel out West. Otherwise intelligent people think Venezuela's Maduro and Bolivia's ex-Morales were mindless dictators who ran fake elections. Obviously totally incurious as to the truth and socialist revolution. Worse, they don't give a shit really about Canada's foreign policy, and by golly old Lester B was as wonderful as can be imagined.

Then there's Montreal Simon and his hard on for Justin which brooks no criticism whatsoever of his idol. No amount of logic gets through that set-in-concrete mind. And it lashes out in ludicrous defence to the point where I consider it an impedimented dementia.

So except for a bright spot here and there, I've found the ProgBlog experience somewhat palling of late. Incurious and unwilling to investigate further. They don't even read the Canadian Dimension articles, apparently. As a result they write nonsense more often than not. Or as a business acquaintance of mine used to tell dolts: Your problem is you don't understand that you don't understand.

Anyway, I look forward to the occasional blog post from you in future. I was beginning to think that actually trying to find the truth no matter where it lay and what political party or creed needed to be impugned was a step too far. It's my engineering background that perhaps brought me to question all this BS - something about to be unleashed on an unsuspecting public has to be safe - and that means analyzing, designing and fabricating "things" brooks no fucking opinions from dorks in basements who haven't a clue. And the hand of business is even screwing that up at places like Boeing.

BM

thwap said...

BM,

Thanks for your comment. It's gratifying to read from someone else who tries to avoid succumbing to tribalism. Because it's been so dispiriting to see how people with otherwise decent morals and above normal intelligence spew out garbage such as you summarized above.

A couple of things; I will refer to Paul Krugman on occasion, but with a few grains of salt. I remember taking issue with him back in the 1990s on trade, but also agreeing with him when he criticized the Bank of Canada's obsession with zero inflation.

On George Monbiot, you'll find me praising a couple of his books on this blog. I understand he's become an advocate of regime-change in Syria, which I find regrettable. As for his newspaper, The Guardian, it still writes the occasional good thing but on Syria, Corbyn, and a few other issues recently, it's sheer dreck.

(That is what I find makes liberal newspapers such tiresome reading. You read a right-wing newspaper and you can get worked-up at their arrogance and cluelessness and hypocrisy. So often with something like the Toronto Star or Guardian you find yourself agreeing with their premises but then find yourself lost in some depressing maze of arguments about how intractable problems are, how some technocratic policy might mitigate a problem, how past policies created new problems. Tinkering with neo-liberalism. Forever.)

Anyhow, it was a real treat to log-in to my blog and find a comment from someone else working to go after the truth wherever it might lead them.