“The United States has been at risk for some time of overestimating its influence internationally by clinging to experiences from the past. In the immediate aftermath of World War II and following the implosion of the Soviet Union, Washington exercised virtually unchecked power and influence due to circumstances that no longer apply. Other powers decimated in WWII have recovered, and new powers have emerged. The return to a multipolar system is taking shape. … At first glance, it may appear that the newly elected Trump administration will accept and adjust to declining U.S. influence because of its focus on domestic change under an America First agenda. More likely, however, Trump and his team will pursue the illusion of U.S. influence while accelerating its decline.” (11/18/24)
Source: Common Dreams
by Medea Benjamin & Nicolas JS Davies
“Of all U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s choices for his foreign policy team, Marco Rubio is the least controversial to the neoconservative foreign policy establishment in Washington, and the most certain to provide continuity with all that is wrong with U.S. foreign policy, from Cuba to the Middle East to China. The only area where there might be some hope for ending a war is Ukraine, where Rubio has come close to Trump’s position, praising Ukraine for standing up to Russia, but recognizing that the U.S. is funding a deadly ‘stalemate war’ that needs to be ‘brought to a conclusion.’ But in all the other hot spots around the world, Rubio is likely to make conflicts even hotter, or start new ones.” (11/18/24)
“Will it happen this time? Even the most profligate taxers and spenders sometimes talk about making our federal government ‘more efficient’ or about ‘cutting waste.’ Commissions are set up, reports issued, and then — we still see the same runaway trajectory. This time, former President and President-Elect Donald Trump has announced that two heavy hitters, entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, will be heading up a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to do the job. They’re already planning and hiring. … The project of cutting wasteful expenditures is the same going-nowhere notion that we have seen before.” (11/18/24)
“Former President and President-elect Donald Trump has been tarred, inconsistently with his actual record, with the charge of being soft on Russia. He has never been charged with being soft on Iran. Trump unilaterally and illegally pulled out of the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran. He imposed devastating sanctions on Iran. He ordered the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s top general and the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force. General Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the last Trump administration, says he feared that Trump would launch missile strikes on Iran that could trigger an all out war. ‘If you do this,’ Milley told him, ‘you’re gonna have a fucking war.’ Trump’s transition team is already working on plans to ‘drastically increase sanctions on Iran and throttle its oil sales.'” (11/18/24)
“What I’m calling ‘monkey masculinity’ is a deep and old problem, and one that I will shortly explain. And unfortunately it will not vanish in any short period of time. The ‘surge’ part of our title, however, refers to a recent phenomenon, and it will vanish. In fact, I think its process of decline is beginning right now. The deep problem, to put it very simply, is a tendency of males to view females as things rather than as full beings. This tendency is overwhelming in primates, with whom we share a great deal of body chemistry, while in humans it is generally weaker and more variable. Nonetheless, the hormonal roots of the problem are shared.” (11/17/24)
“With his recent appointment announcements, President Trump has demonstrated how committed he is to shaking things up in D.C. Many on all sides of the political spectrum were surprised when President Trump announced that Rep. Matt Gaetz was his choice for Attorney General. This is the guy who led the opposition to Speaker McCarthy. Remember that the House Armed Services Committee Chairman had to be restrained to prevent fisticuffs on the House Floor. K Street was apoplectic. Sages warned that this would destroy Republican chances to hold the majority. A cardinal rule in Washington etiquette requires members to respect even hyper-partisan adversaries. You say: ‘The gentleman from Illinois misspoke’. Never: ‘The jerk from Illinois just told a bald-faced lie.’ Taking on and toppling a Speaker of your own party is … unthinkable. But Matt Gaetz is a different breed of cat.” (11/18/24)
“Every state ends in fascism sooner or later. This tragic fate becomes inevitable the moment that you sanctify power by monopolizing the use force in the hands of the few and it usually plays out the same way. A plutocracy masquerading as a democracy becomes increasingly authoritarian as its veneer of legitimacy begins to disintegrate. Once this farce fails and words like ‘left-wing’ and ‘liberal’ lose all meaning in the mouths of elitist oligarchs, the masses flock to more brazenly authoritarian solutions because that is precisely what the state has groomed them to do. … I must conclude with my more hysterical colleagues on the far left, this is indeed the end of the world as we know it. However, there is good news, and that good news is the very fact that this is indeed the end of the world as we know it.” (11/17/24)
“In a landmark decision in federal court, after a hung jury in the first hearing, the second jury found in favor of fired BART workers who had sued their employer after termination for filing vaccine mandate religious exemption applications. Each of the six plaintiffs in the case was awarded more than $1 million by the jury. … by the time the vaccine mandates were implemented in the fall of 2021, the widespread Delta strain of Covid-19 infection had largely escaped vaccine immunity (remember the first booster campaign?) and thus the evidence of Covid-19 transmission risk reduction for ‘full vaccination’ required by the mandates was virtually gone — except that medical experts for the defendants in the BART and other cases were still using the earlier stale evidence to support their scientific assertions.” (11/17/24)
“While Donald Trump was campaigning for a new presidential term, many of his critics warned that a second Trump administration would be far worse than the first if only because ‘the adults in the room’ would not be there to restrain him. The more traditional Republicans who had staffed the first administration had mostly deserted the ship; in their place would be a team of hardcore loyalists and cronies, many of them incompetent and some of them outright cranks. So what do his selections so far tell us about the incoming Trump Administration and the next four years?” (11/17/24)
