TELLS THE FACTS AND NAMES THE NAMES VOLUME 24 NUMBER 4 2017 the bl lism bythe firesofneolibera kennehsuren can NA Wha The Disappearance oftheAmericanLef The Disappearance t ’ s drivingtrump oodba To s till makeAmericagrea th ofvienamw ’ s obsession withmexico? byl as us by michaeluh t? by ronjacobs t by P aul s tree aura carl sEn

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Roaming Charges...... 6 borderzone notes The War That Time Forgot What’s Behind Trump’s Obsession by Jeffrey St. Clair with Bashing Mexico? Re-selling the Afghan war. by Laura Carlsen...... 10 Empire Burlesque ...... 7 Surrendering Our Secrets eurozone notes by Chris Floyd Ghosts in the magic machine. Refugees and Mental Health Exit Strategies...... 8 by Daniel Raventós and Julie Wark...... 12 Justice and the Poor White Trump Voter articles by Yvette Carnell There is No Real Left Now The marketing of Kamala Harris. by Paul Street ...... 14 Grasping at Straws ...... 9 Let the Buybacks Begin Can NATO Still Make America Great? by Mike Whitney by Ron Jacobs ...... 19 Putting the Wall Street genie back in the bottle. White Supremacy, Not Jesus, May Be Your God culture by Lawrence Ware ...... 23 & reviews The Fires of Neoliberalism Give & Take by Lee Ballinger...... 32 by Kenneth Surin ...... 26 The Bloodbath of Vietnam Was Us by Michael Uhl ...... 28 You’re holding an official copy of Counter- accounted for when the order is processed. Punch Magazine which contains exclusive print + digital subsCriptions include the bi-monthly articles and special features you will not find magazine by mail (6 issues per year), containing exclusive on the CounterPunch website or anywhere articles and special features you can’t find on our web- else on the internet. site. Each edition of the magazine is (36) pages. Subscrip- tions begin within 3 weeks of subscribing, and start with Current subscribers can find their expiration the current issue being advertised at the time the order is date on the address label on the back of the placed unless specified otherwise. Plus you’ll get every- magazine. Please renew your subscription thing that comes with a digital subscription. several weeks prior to the expiration date to digital subsCriptions are virtually the same as our avoid missing an issue. print subscriptions. The main difference is that instead of receiving a print version in the mail you will receive the The password for the subscriber only access bi-monthly magazine delivered via email with a link to a area on the CounterPunch website will be PDF plus access to the online subscriber only archive. emailed with each new issue of the digital giFt subsCriptions: Please include the gift recipient’s magazine. This is where subscribers can mailing address for print subscriptions and email ad- access all the back issues since the maga- dress for digital edition subscriptions. A gift note will be zine’s inception. sent with the first issue. Choose your subsCription type: supporter subsCriptions include a donation to Coun- terPunch and are available for both print/digital and digi- If you are renewing your subscription, this will be tal subscriptions.

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You Lefty Scum! temic racism. This means you to deal with the causes of ing a lick at slicing the tongues You got something right. operate as a white man could addiction because these things from perfectly good shoes, I Trump may actually go to war. never fully understand all the get to the heart of America’s get a shot”: “Man, why you cut- I hope he does. Then all hell variables regarding President inequalities. It would mean ting up all them good shoes?” will break out. There are no Obama’s trailblazing role and enacting real structural change, He looks at me like…well, I words to describe how I feel his real impact on a historical which the millions of tempo- don’t know squat about shoes, about you lefty open borders level. A series of articles on the rarily embarrassed millionaires or camping, and says “It makes scum at CounterPunch, The psychology of racism can clue would never favor. them lighter.” I relate this tale to Doug Peacock, who ups the animal killing savages who call you in, if you even have interest We live in a society based on in exploring missing links: unhealthy competition, “pull ante by regaling me with stories themselves Republicans, and http://www.huffingtonpost. yourself up by your boot- about traversing the deep des- the racketeering Democrats. com/author/fannie-leflore straps,” “I’ve got to get mine” ert in Southern Arizona with The sooner you kill each other mindsets that are inhuman. Mr Cockburn, wearing a pair off the better. Fannie LeFlore Milwaukee, Wisconsin People grow up in violent of those tongueless Pumas: “D, Janet Lee Beatty neighborhoods and whose I had to pull cactus spines from Heroin Epidemic? futures offer nothing economi- his feet with my teeth.” Sheryl Paul’s Missing Links Every day we read about cally in terms of jobs, yet we and I were embarking on hike Sorry, Paul Street, but you do the so-called “opioid crisis.” are surprised when they turn from the Tower. Well prepared not know what you are talking Nonsense. There is no more to alcohol and drugs to take we were. Alex intercepted us, about. an “opioid crisis” than there the edge off? Or how about toasted our grand plan with a Obama is far from being hol- is an “alcohol crisis.” By the millions of people who suffer great white, and another, then low. That is your interpretation metrics, alcoholism causes far, from PTSD? Or simply people called his next door neighbor based on viewing far more deaths, family crises, who grew up in emotionally or to tell him we were coming Obama through a distorted and ruined lives than opioids. physically abusive homes and his way and “to look “after us lens with unrealistic expecta- Yet the same forces that would carry the lingering scars from when we arrived, completely tions of the nation’s first black/ have favored prohibition are their childhoods? changing our plan for the biracial president. now favoring the banning of You can ban alcohol, drugs, afternoon. We were headed The fact that you even com- opioids. gambling, whatever. But people toward Mattole Beach and the pared Obama to Martin Luther Just as most people who in pain will always find another Lighthouse--in the opposite di- King Jr. reveals your biased drink alcohol aren’t alcoholics, means to medicate their pain. rection, and it did not matter to approach, which reflects unre- most people who have taken You can help them treat the Alex that we were prepared for alistic expectations that Obama opioids after surgery or for root of the problem, or you can an entirely different adventure. should be compared to King. chronic pain aren’t addicts. let them find another way of He hands us a beautful canvas No, Obama should be com- Banning alcohol didn’t work. coping. But don’t be surprised bag containing another bottle pared to other white male Banning opioids for people when the consequences aren’t of a great white and a quart presidents -- not to King. who suffer from chronic and what you wanted. mason jar of water, some fine In rightfully being compared to debilitating pain isn’t sensible Denis Kucharski cheese and a baguette. Totally other U.S. presidents, Obama is health policy, it is cruel. But grand adventure of totally far from being a tragic figure Puritan America is short on Cockburn Chic different nature. Just last week, I so tire of white liberal males empathy and high on moral Once upon a time, visiting while visiting the Tower for who think they have a clue judgment for things it knows Alexander Cockburn at the the first time since Alex died, I when their liberal perspectives nothing about. Tower, he called me over for a told Daisy that her Dad was the actually lack conscious aware- Why not treat the cause of chat about current events, all most least dead I’d ever known. ness of how racist ideology addiction—some of which may the while cutting the tongues He was. Alexander Cockburn plays out on multiple levels. be genetic, but most of it is from several brand new pairs was one helluva man. I bet you will immediately people trying to self-medicate of Puma shoes—his fave, that Deryle Perryman discount the full impact of how due to emotional pain and he’d stocked up on from some systemic racism affected suffering. America’s economic Puma outlet store just at the Send Letters to the Editor Obama’s presidency on woes for the poor and working Oregon-Califa Border, where to PO Box 228, Petrolia, multiple levels.All I can say classes have added stresses that evidently, he’d buy several pair CA 95558 or, preferably, by to you, Paul Street, is that you have caused people to self- at a time. So while he’s giving email to counterpunch@ wear blinders about how sys- medicate as well. But we refuse me hiking advice, never miss- counterpunch org.

5 Roaming Charges control of the country as it did in 2001. And for that Afghanistan must be pun- ished. Eternally, it seems. The War That Time Forgot As for Trump, in his quest to priva- tize as much of the federal government by Jeffrey St. Clair as possible. he is apparently entertain- ing the idea of turning over much of the Afghan operation to military con- f it’s Independence Day, then you can and the Council on Foreign Relations, tractors. As McCain and Warren were count on John McCain to be bun- rarely diverging from the neocon issuing their war cries from Kabul, I kered down in a remote outpost of playbook for the global war on Islam. Trump and Company huddled with the Empire growling for the Pentagon Warren’s Afghan junket is a sure sign Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater to unleash airstrikes on some unruly of her swelling presidential ambitions. Security, and billionaire financier nation, tribe or gang. This July the These days “national security” experi- Stephen Feinberg, owner of DynCorp, Fourth found McCain making a return ence is measured almost exclusively by on how to replace US troops with mer- engagement to Kabul, an arrival that how much blood you are willing to spill cenaries from their training camps. must have prompted many Afghans to in countries you know little about. Give Trump some credit. His war scramble for the nearest air raid shelter. Most Americans have no idea why plan is refreshingly vacant of moral From the press room at NATO we are in Afghanistan. Some, as many posturing. Instead he views the war command, McCain announced that as 20 percent according to a Gallup through a greedily focused economic “none of us could say we are on a Poll, have no idea that we are still in lens: Afghan War as commodity. Over course to success here.” The senator Afghanistan. Osama Bin Laden and the course of 16 years, the cratering should have paused for a reflective Mullah Omar are both long dead. The American operation in Afghanistan has moment and then called for an end to shattered remnants of Al Qaeda have consumed more than $1 trillion, a huge the war. Instead, McCain demanded fled to Pakistan. For the last six months, and nearly unchallenged benefaction that Trump send more US troops, more the US hasn’t even troubled itself to to military contractors. In 2016, the bombers and more drones to terrorize a send an ambassador to Kabul. Pentagon spent $3.6 million for each population that has been riven by near A kind of convenient cultural US soldier stationed in Afghanistan. constant war since the late 1970s. amnesia has set in, abetted by a com- A surge of 4,000 to 10,000 additional McCain’s martial drool is now as pliant press corps that has largely de- troops, either as “private military units” familiar as the opening notes to the camped from the Hindu Kush and now or GIs, will come as a welcome new in- “Law & Order” theme song. What may treats Afghanistan as if it is some kind fusion of cash to the dozens of defense surprise some, however, is the compo- of interstellar region, where photogra- corporations that invested so heavily in sition of the delegation that signed up phers are occasionally dispatched to his administration. to travel on his frequent flier program, snap eerie debris clouds from the deto- If that living monument to the notably the presence of two Democratic nation of MOAB bombs. It’s no wonder Confederacy Jefferson B. Sessions was Senators with soaring profiles: Sheldon that the few Americans who continue serious about confronting the rising Whitehouse and Elizabeth Warren. to support the war cling to the delusion scourge of opiate addiction in the US, Whitehouse, has lately taken a star turn that Afghanistan orchestrated the 9/11 he would start by calling for an im- in the role of chief inquisitor of suspect- attacks. It is the War that Time Forgot. mediate end to US military operations ed Russian witches in the Senate intel- Nothing better illustrates the eclipse in Afghanistan. Forget marijuana, the ligence committee hearings. Perhaps he of US global power than the fact that real gateway to heroin abuse is war. finally located one selling AK-47s to the Afghanistan refuses to be subjugated Since the start of Operation Enduring Taliban. or even managed, despite 16 years of Freedom, opium production has For her part, Warren largely echoed hard-core carnage. Since the first US swelled, now accounting for more McCain’s bellicose banter that Trump airstrikes hit Kandahar in October than one-third of the wrecked Afghan needs to double down militarily to 2001, more than 150,000 Afghan civil- economy. In the last two years alone, finish off the Taliban, the impossible ians have been killed. Still Afghanistan opium poppy yields have doubled, a dream. No real surprise here. To the resists imperial dictates. Even after narcotic blowback hitting the streets extent that she’s advanced any foreign Obama’s shameful troop surge in 2010, of American cities from Amarillo to policy positions during her stint in an escalation that went almost unop- Pensacola. With every drone strike, a the senate, Warren has been a dutiful posed by the US antiwar movement, thousand poppies bloom. cp supplicant to the demands of AIPAC the Taliban now retains almost as much

6 empire burlesque keys to the magic machine. And this need not apply only to those who had roused themselves to de- Surrendering Our Secrets nounce publicly the crimes and rapine of the powers that be. No, even that quiet bank manager, that suffering ob- to Malevolent Powers sessive, might draw back from making by Chris Floyd waves—or supporting any wave- makers—in the knowledge that their “And if my thought-dreams personal strangeness could potentially could be seen encountered, explored—and this in be exposed. This fearful but not unrea- They’d probably stick my head deepest privacy, in the safe confines sonable assumption is, in part, the fruit in a guillotine.” of our homes, our normal daily reality. of the many whistleblowing revelations Who could resist dipping—or plunging— about the surveillance state and the in- hus quoth the Bard, more than half into such a dream-world? Yes, of course, credibly pervasive reach of our hi-tech a century ago. At the time, these we speak of the internet. behemoths (Google, Facebook, etc.) in T lines were an electrifying insight And these explorations need not be recent years. We have all been taught into human nature, lighting up dark anything inherently aberrant or illegal, to assume that everything we do and corners of the psyche not usually ex- but simply retrograde to what we think say and show on-line is being watched, plored 77in popular music. They were of as our truest, essential self. The pastor stored and laid open to state and corpo- also a jolting reversal of the usual protest with his porn. The pacifist strangely rate scrutiny. And we are right to do so. song dynamic: a righteous hero de- drawn to videos of beheadings. The Yet because this magic machine has nouncing evil from a position of moral staid bank manager trawling trans sites. tapped into our of most primal impuls- purity. Here, at the end of a long, incan- The anxiety victim obsessively chasing es, because it offers the ever-alluring but descent jeremiad against a sick society, irrational fears down dark alleys of un- ever-elusive promise of filling the holes we see the “prophet” suddenly subject- seemly horror. The kindly liberal with torn in our psyches by our individual ing himself to the harsh judgment he an inexplicable fascination with the upbringings and by the cruelties, chaos had just rendered. “Yeah, this place is swamplands of racist bile. The bored and contradictions in any and every Hieronymus Bosch on stilts—but you office worker idly following links into social, political and cultural milieu we should see what’s howling in my head!’ fields of lurid fantasy. The permutations find ourselves caught up in, we keep ex- We all have a night mind, we all have are endless. Every dark impulse, every ploring—and recording—our thought- thought-dreams which, if exposed, passing fantasy, every perverse or unset- dreams with it. We can’t stop feeding perhaps might not get us guillotined tling notion thrown up by the imp of it with kompromat against ourselves, but could well kill the image we present the mind: all of this available, in endless can’t stop giving malevolent forces— to others—and to ourselves. And profusion, 24/7, all over the world. who care nothing for us beyond what this is true even for the most liber- Now imagine if all of these self- they can wring from us for their own ated, hip or “woke” among us. (Like exposing thought-dreams were being re- power and profit—the key to the inner Dylan’s own sheepish confession in his corded by the magic machine. Imagine sanctum of our souls. memoir, Chronicles, that back in the if this compromising material could be There is also the fact these malevolent day he’d harbored a secret liking for made instantly available to the security forces have made it virtually impossible Barry Goldwater because the politician organs of an overweening nation-state to carry out daily life without giving reminded him of Tom Mix, the movie or the overlords of a rapacious corpo- them access to your lives and thoughts. cowboy. Now that’s perverse!) rate power. What you would have then In order simply to function in the So imagine if there were a magic is an apparatus of repression, blackmail modern world, you must tell them who machine that let us explore our own and control beyond the wildest dreams you are, where you are, what you are guillotinable notions—or indeed, to of the most tyrannical regimes, religions buying, reading, watching, listening to. range through the night-mind of the and ideologies in all of human history. So the Laureate’s lyrics are no longer whole human race, encountering lurid Any dissident, any heretic speaking out metaphorical lights cast into our secret thought-dreams beyond our previous against the power structure could be darkness. They are the literal truth: our imagining. A magic machine where undermined politically, if not destroyed thought-dreams can be seen. And they every forbidden thought or fear or psychologically, by the exposure of their can be used, should the powerful wish it, desire, even things abhorrent to our own night-mind, their guillotine-worthy to put our heads in a guillotine. cp daylight mind, could be approached, thought-dreams, by those who hold the

7 exit strategies “At Howard, you had the ability—if you hadn’t known before—to know you can do whatever you want. Everyone’s Here Comes Kamala perspective of themselves and others is based on the limitations of their by Yvette Carnell exposure,” Harris told Elle in a 2015 interview. Harris, born of a Jamaican father and Indian mother, lacks under- n November of 1996, Texaco Cory Booker gushing like a schoolboy standing that the material condition of settled a discrimination lawsuit about how he “revered” Harris. Then African-Americans in this country is I which revealed that senior execu- President Obama was caught shame- based on systemic racism and oppres- tives at the company had referred to faced when in 2013 he called Harris “the sion, not a limited perspective. African-American employees as black best looking attorney general in the “Whereas the New Deal had paved jelly beans. Transcripts disclosed that country”. And the corporate media is the way for homeownership for white company brass at the oil giant had joked taking its rightful position as the fourth Detroiters and its new immigrants, that “all of the black jelly beans seem to branch of the feudal hierarchy with it imposed steep obstacles for black be glued to the bottom of the bag.” The headlines like “Kamala Harris Went to residents. Red lining and restrictive cov- remoteness with which these executives Prison So Others Won’t have to” from enants limited potential homeowners to denigrated Blacks as objects rather than Mother Jones and “Inside the Legislative certain areas,” reported the Washington humans who are inherently equal to Fight for the Rights of Incarcerated Post. But the politics popularized by whites is what sticks out the most in that Women” from Slate. Obama and Harris is void of history, comment. Executives at the company Like Obama, Harris is substituting and marked by mostly performative also seemed totally disconnected from Black culture for Black politics. Harris superficiality. It’s the politics of racial the role they play in ensuring—through recently released a Spotify playlist which spectacles, a pageantry politics which policies, hiring practices, and bias—that included such immensely popular acts allows Harris to speak effusively of Blacks don’t rise within the ranks of A Tribe Called Quest, a favorite of Howard University, but remain silent corporate America. Shockingly though, Black Gen-Xers, Childish Gambino, as Obama decreased federal grant there was a half-truth embedded in that a Black millennial artist whose single funding to HBCUs and implemented comment: While most blacks don’t rise “Redbone” is blowing up the charts, and PLUS loan changes that cost the schools within the ranks of corporate America, “What’s Going on by Marvin Gaye” for over $300 million in two years. It’s this those who do usually rise in proportion old soul aficionados. Similarly, Obama politics that allows Harris’s star to rise to their willingness to placate the Black perfected using music and other cul- based on making. Attorney General community with empty symbolism. tural queues to supplant himself in the Jeff Sessions feel “nervous” during a Enter U.S. Senator Kamala Harris. Black community, a community that, hearing, or because she got cut off by The recent Observer headline “Clinton according to Rising Star: The Making of white Republicans. Donors Have Picked Their 2020 Barack Obama author David J. Garrow, This uncomplicated rendering of Democratic Presidential Nominee” Obama had no organic relationship African-Americanness, which groups fueled speculation that the growing with prior to running for public office. African-Americans based on skin color consensus among Democratic donors is Double Down: Game Change 2012 and commoditized Black culture, rather that Harris is next in line for the presi- authors wrote that Obama had little pa- than a shared history of oppression, and dential nomination. Harris has certainly tience for “professional blacks” and even the loathsome way in which Democrats been a dutiful tool of the moneyed class. less for the Congressional Black Caucus. employ it to get elected, is emblematic of Steven Mnuchin probably wouldn’t Yet during his eight years in office, he who liberals really are.: tools of not only head up Trump’s Treasury Department was able to build and maintain historic the super-rich, but the top 20 percent as were it not for Harris’s decision not to levels of support in the Black communi- well, and their job is to keep us under prosecute OneWest bank, a bank which ty by, at least in part, adding Lil Wayne heel as they redistribute wealth from the Mnuchin headed, and one with over to his playlist and singing Al Green and bottom to the top. Kamala is preparing 10,000 foreclosure violations, according “Amazing Grace.” to finish what Obama started. Get ready. to The Intercept. Harris actually has a few more pages Kamala’s coming. cp The con game we’re watching repeat in her playbook than Obama did. She itself with the rise of California’s former attended my alma mater—Howard top cop is formulaic. The Black political University, an HBCU (Historically class has all but anointed Harris, with Black College or University).

8 Grasping At Straws This is why stock prices keep rising. It has nothing to do with the strength of the economy which is barely treading Let the Buybacks Begin water at a measly 2 percent GDP. It’s all due to the more than $7 trillion that’s by Mike Whitney been dumped into the repurchasing of shares since 2004. Absent that surge of capital, the markets would still be n June 28, the Federal Reserve bottom line. It’s just another example of limping along at half-speed. concluded its annual “stress tests” the Fed doing what the Fed does best, Deregulation has produced an in- O and gave all 34 of the nation’s feather the nests of its primary constitu- centives structure that encourages bad biggest banks a clean bill of health. The ents, the Wall Street behemoths. behavior, that is, CEOs are pressured Fed’s announcement was greeted with Of course, there is a downside to all by greedy shareholders to direct more riotous applause on Wall Street where this stock manipulation, which is that of their capital into buybacks to juice all three major stock indices skyrock- overall production suffers, wages stay stock prices and increase their wealth. eted into record territory. By approv- low, and the economy remains mired in That, in turn, reduces the amount of ing the capital plans of all 34 firms, a permanent funk due to the fact that money available for investment which the Fed gave the banks a green light to 4 percent of GDP is being regularly di- puts a damper on growth and employ- boost dividends and repurchase more verted from research and development, ment. The net result is that stock prices of their own shares essentially paving employee training, and new factories become detached from the underly- the way for another orgy of corporate and equipment into a financial black ing economy while the gaping chasm looting aimed at lining the pockets of hole that sucks money out of companies between rich and poor continues to incentives-driven CEOs and their uber- to reward corporate bosses and their widen. rich shareholders. avaricious shareholders. That’s not how Is there a remedy? According to the Seattle Times: “fi- you build a strong economy. Yes, there is. Congress needs to work nancial firms unleashed a windfall of The amount of money that is ear- with the President to put the genie back repurchases that single-handedly re- marked for stock buybacks and divi- in the bottle. That will require more ac- versed a year-to-date decline in overall dends is simply staggering. Check out tivist and principled leaders at the SEC, stock-buyback authorizations. At $390 this clip from the Wall Street Journal: leaders who don’t mind locking horns billion, planned buybacks are 3 percent “On average, the group of firms taking with the corporate bigwigs who are above the amount at this time last year, part in the stress tests requested payouts going to scream “bloody murder” when a turnaround from the previous week, that are near 100% of their expected their golden goose is threatened. It’s a when the total was down 9 percent.” earnings over the next year, up from 65% tall order, but it can be done. Yipee. So the Fed’s little “Punch last year, senior Fed officials said. That Keep in mind, that buybacks were and Judy” show was a rousing success. means banks in some cases will be able illegal before 1982 because they were Investors gobbled up bank shares like to start whittling away at capital buffers seen as a form of stock market manipu- they were going out of style, the public that many bank executives say are well lation. Now that they have become a was duped into believing the banking in excess of what is needed to absorb critical revenue stream for corporate system is safe, and all the main stock potential losses.” (WSJ) America, it’s going to be much harder indices climbed back into record terri- Think about that for a minute: 100% to ban them. But that doesn’t make it tory. Mission accomplished! of projected earnings will be devoted any less necessary. Stricter regulations Naturally, the Fed’s calculations were to shareholder payouts that weaken the can eliminate the negative effects of fi- based on “smoke and mirrors” account- business, put a lid on future growth, and nancial engineering so that less money ing methods that would never pass curtail employment. How is that good flows into paper assets and more money muster internationally, but that’s neither for the economy? goes into business investment, higher here nor there. (The Fed pegs the capital It’s not good for the economy or wages and productivity. Banning stock held by the 34 U.S. banks as 14 percent of the country. And some banks plan to buybacks may not noticeably grow the assets, while, according to international spend even more than 100 percent on middle class or raise standards of living, accounting standards, the capital ratio buybacks and dividends. According to but it’s a good place to start. cp is a mere 6.3 percent.) The point is the the same WSJ article, Citigroup plans to Fed passed all these undercapitalized spend “132% of what Wall Street analysts zombies with flying colors so they could expect the bank to earn” in the next pump up stock prices and fatten the year.

9 ties”, and “foreign nations that got rich at Americans’ expense”. borderzone notes “…We are pursuing a total renego- tiation of NAFTA,” he says in a stilted, to-camera delivery as the real Donald Trump sat down with Peña Nieto and What’s Behind Trump’s other G20 leaders in Hamburg, “and if we don’t get it, we will terminate—that is, end—NAFTA forever.” That’s what has Peña Nieto bending Obsession with Bashing over backwards. History of Insults Mexico? This isn’t the first time Trump has by Laura Carlsen used a high-profile diplomatic dialogue to denigrate Mexico and humiliate its president. And it isn’t the first time the onald Trump deflected part of looks at, and that the two countries will Mexican president has failed to defend the global spotlight on the G20 be renegotiating NAFTA, adding an the nation or his office. D to engage in one of his favorite almost threatening, “We’ll see how that In fact, this has happened every sports—publicly bashing Mexico. As all turns out.” He then offers Peña Nieto single time the bilateral relationship is he and Mexican President Enrique the floor as if it were an act of generos- addressed formally. Peña Nieto spoke to the press at their ity on his part. As Peña Nieto speaks, Let’s look at the chronology of the first meeting since the inauguration, a Trump fidgets impatiently. The formal most important moments in the on- reporter asked, “Mr. Trump, do you still statements end with a handshake and a going diplomatic crisis: want Mexico to pay for the wall?”. forced smile. The question on the wall June 16, 2015–November 2016, Trump replied “Absolutely”, as seen is shouted from the press and then the The Campaign: on this CNN video clip. Peña Nieto did dagger’s plunged. not respond. According to reports, Mexican Mexico was a centerpiece of Trump’s That’s a torpedo aimed straight at the foreign minister Luis Videgaray first speech, announcing his candidacy. binational relationship. Not because the went straight to the press room to do “Believe me, Mexico is not our friend”, fight over the wall is what most matters damage control. Videgaray, who was he told cheering supporters. He then in the teetering diplomacy between the sitting next to Peña Nieto, said neither added his infamous comment, “They’re two neighbors—after all, much of the heard Trump’s comment. News of the bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. wall is already built and the rest isn’t diplomatic slam-dunk spread quickly They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are likely to happen any time soon. But the through the international press. For good people.” This continued through- border wall is the predictable prop for Mexicans, the exchange caused the out the campaign, as the chant “Build the ritualized putdowns of the South usual outrage over Trump’s latest insult, the Wall” became a rallying cry. With by the North. It’s part of the spectacle and a feeding frenzy against Peña Nieto. almost the entire Mexican population of the bully and the sycophant that the Using the hashtag “#absolutamente” outraged, President Peña Nieto’s refusal press on both sides of the border seeks critics slammed the Mexican president to actively defend the country against out with morbid anticipation. for acting like the country’s interests the verbal offensive became a factor in An examination of the short video are best served by bending over back- his sinking approval ratings. is revealing. In the press gaggle, we wards to placate an aggressively hostile August 31, 2016, see Trump seated in typical macho opponent. The Visit to Mexico: stance—knees separated wide, jaw set. The wall comment and body lan- Peña Nieto looks meek beside him. guage weren’t the only slights. The Apparently a glutton for abuse, in Everything about Trump’s demeanor, same day all this was happening at August Peña Nieto invited trailing from the body language to his “I would the G20, back home Trump released candidate Donald Trump to Mexico. really rather not be here” delivery, are a video-taped address declaring July The trip was a disaster for the Mexican aimed at humiliating his Mexican “Made in America” month. In the president. Peña Nieto not only rolled counterpart. Trump begins by saying short video, he goes back to his threat out the red carpet—he made himself it’s great to be with his “friend, the to withdraw from NAFTA and rails the doormat. Donald Trump as a president of Mexico”, who he never against “jobs ripped out of communi- candidate in a foreign election in dip-

10 lomatic terms was far beneath Peña’s through domestic policies or how international forums, like the recent- presidential stature, but he was given much Trumpcare would hurt them. It failed-vote to censure Venezuela in the the podium as an equal and played also bolsters support for his accelerat- OAS. the Mexican president like a chump. ing deportation program. Videgaray stated after the presiden- Trump got a statesman’s patina when In the upcoming NAFTA renegotia- tial meeting that the leaders confirmed a lot of people in the U.S. still weren’t tion, Trump has to perform a tightrope that renegotiation of NAFTA will begin taking him seriously, and Peña Nieto walk between the pro-corporate and on August 16, and also addressed the got universally lampooned. Adding protectionist factions of his inner circle, drug war, Central America, a possible injury to insult, Trump then flew di- while at the same time maintaining temporary guest worker program for rectly to Arizona where he gave his a veneer of concern for U.S. workers. U.S. agriculture, and reducing drug most virulently anti-immigrant speech He won’t be able to do all this, but he’ll demand in the United States. This is of the campaign. still need a way to spin whatever comes a U.S., not a Mexican or even shared, out of the talks as a “tremendous” agenda. The U.S. approach to these January 25, 2017, win for America-First and a sound issues, through huge increases in its The Cancelled Bilateral: drubbing of Mexico. Keeping up the presence in Mexico since the 2008 After the Electoral College made Mexico-bashing beforehand helps set Merida Initiative began, has worsened Donald Trump president, the Mexican the stage. Trump views all international rather than improved Mexican security government doubled down on its con- relations like a lucha libre ring fight, but and well-being. ciliatory strategy, scheduling a bilateral especially when it comes to Mexico. The G20 agenda under host Angela meeting for Jan. 31. On Jan 25, foreign That said, we can’t discount the psy- Merkel sought to develop collaborative minister Luis Videgaray arrived in chological factor. Trump’s obsessive responses to forced mass global migra- Washington to plan the meeting. The anti-Mexico tweeting and sabotaging of tion, free trade and climate change. same day Trump released two executive the bilateral relationship doesn’t always Trump’s views made him an outsider on orders—one to build the wall and the follow a plan. He really does seem to these issues. The G20 final declaration other to put in place a plan for massive hate Mexico—his personal disdain for outlines an agenda that counters the deportation. This time, the timing was Peña, Mexico and migrants is evident Trump Agenda explicitly (on climate too much. Peña Nieto cancelled the every time he brings up the issue, which change) and implicitly (on commit- meeting. In a follow-up call suppos- is often and with a kind of a snarky glee. ments to “fight protectionism”, “support edly to patch things up, Trump said he Apparently, wielding overwhelming those countries that choose to develop didn’t need Mexico and would send in U.S. economic and military dominance pathways for migration”, and under- the U.S. Army if the country couldn’t is not enough for him. Trump has a score cooperation). More nations are control its crime problem. deep ego attachment to being the alpha looking to sideline the United States in this relationship. This is personal. under Trump, diplomatically and eco- Psychology or Strategy? As for Mexico, the incident is another nomically. The UK-Japan Free Trade It’s hard to sort out how much of example of Peña’s futile policy of trying Agreement is just one example and it’s Trump’s compulsion to use Mexico to gain Trump’s good graces. If there’s likely we’ll see many more. Peña Nieto as a punching bag is visceral and how one thing we know by now, Trump could easily have used that to build much is strategic. During the cam- is never graceful. And his deeply in- new coalitions and take a strong stance paign, conjuring negative images of grained dislike is an insurmountable with other nations against the now- Mexico and Mexican immigrants was wall. distanced U.S. government. He should clearly the wedge issue that animated a It’s not that the Trump Admini- have. racist base long known to exist in the stration has no use for its south- But despite talk of diversifying eco- Republican Party. But now as president ern neighbor. General John Kelly at nomic ties, Mexico is still banking on the Mexico-bashing can no longer be Homeland Security has concentrated the United States. Literally. The country written off as a campaign gimmick. on developing a new role for Mexico is dependent on the U.S. for trade and That’s scary, because although Mexico’s with continual trips to Mexico and investment, and the Mexican ruling hardly ever considered a foreign policy meetings with Mexican authorities. elite is interwoven with U.S. interests. priority, it’s arguably the bilateral rela- Kelly expects Mexico to patrol its south- It’s no wonder the Peña adminis- tionship that most affects daily lives in ern border to stop Central American tration won’t distance itself from its the U.S. migrants, continue the war on drugs abuser. There’s still a political rationale there. militarization that has killed more than But if the relationship continues on Mexico-bashing plays a critical role in 150,000 people (and led to huge spike this collision course, he may have no keeping Trump’s core mobilized and in violence this year). Mexico has also choice. cp distracting from his failure pushing been asked to act as a U.S. proxy in

11 There is a general feeling of derange- ment in Europe, especially with the rise eurozone notes in violent “terrorist” (loosely defined as calculated use of violence against civilians in the name of political or religious or ideological goals) attacks. Refugees and Mental A 2017 Europol report estimates that in 2016 there were 142 failed, foiled and completed attacks in eight EU member states, more than half of them Health: CURA TE IPSUM in the United Kingdom. Although the by Daniel Raventós and Julie Wark mainstream press squawks “Islamist”, Europol notes that ethno-nationalist and separatist extremists account for ore than a hundred years condition.” the majority. The attacker profile is ago Karl Jaspers described in Investigators sent to the children’s often that of a youngish misfit: men M General Psychopathology the countries of origin learned that local living in marginal immigrant areas syndrome of apathy: an “absence of doctors had never heard of these like Molenbeek in Brussels, with petty feeling […which] shows itself objec- symptoms, which then put the onus criminal records, drinkers, apparently tively in the patient not taking food, on Sweden. Indeed, as a 2013 Swedish not religious extremists but sometimes in a passive indifference to being hurt, Board of Health and Welfare report fanatically deranged. One example is burnt, etc.” A similar phenomenon allowed, the only cure was a residence Ali Sonboly, 18, of German-Iranian has appeared in Sweden with several permit. Nevertheless, the temptation to citizenship who, screaming profanities hundred cases over the past decade. see the syndrome as specific to Sweden about foreigners, shot and killed nine The apparently unconscious sufferers may not be very helpful as many cases people, seven of them teenagers, in are children and adolescents in the with comparable symptoms suggest Munich in July 2016. He was influenced midst of a tortu(r)ous asylum-seeking that, throughout history and across by Anders Behring Breivik, the white process and the phenomenon is so cultures, withdrawal from the world supremacist who murdered 77 people clearly identifiable that the National by means of apathy, madness, and even in Norway in 2011. Of course this is Board of Health and Welfare has rec- death is a very human response to ter- not to deny the very real danger of ognized this “Resignation Syndrome”. rifying insecurity. ISIS terror, its symbiotic relation with Some people see it as a singular mani- Sweden’s uppgivenhetssyndrom has western terror and the fact that there festation of posttraumatic stress dis- focused attention on the Migration are ISIS infiltrators among refugees. order (PTSD). Others call it Pervasive Board as the solution to the problem, Researchers from the National Refusal Syndrome. and hence the duty of the state to guar- Consortium for the Study of Terrorism Last April The New Yorker published antee citizen security. It has sparked and Responses to Terrorism in a moving article by Rachel Aviv titled debate about trygghet (security in the Maryland find that the most likely “The Trauma of Facing Deportation” sense of belonging, trust and freedom targets of terrorism worldwide are about more than four hundred refugee from danger, fear and anxiety), the Muslims but the press is not exactly children aged between eight and fifteen concept which, as the Welfare Minister gung ho when it comes to reporting and mostly from former Soviet and put it in 1967, “is the most basic founda- this. In Germany, there were nearly ten Yugoslav states (but with no contact tion of the individual”. This is exactly attacks against immigrants every day among them) who have “fallen un- what refugees don’t have—have been in 2016. When the terrorist is a white conscious after being informed that denied—and, although their mental Anglo-Saxon like Darren Osborne who, their families will be expelled from distress is evident, diagnosis and treat- shouting “I’m going to kill all Muslims”, the country”. This distressing upp- ment is not nearly such a high official recently attacked people at the Finsbury givenhetssyndrom is said to exist only priority as screening for infectious Park mosque in London, semantic in Sweden. Doctors are at a loss when diseases. The latter are easier to identify coyness prevails. Terrorist? No, he’s faced with this pathological expres- and treat while complex cultural issues “troubled” (The Telegraph). Did he get sion of a general moral crisis brought and linguistic problems make psychiat- “troubled” by ubiquitous headlines like on when the social contract fails: ric disorders more difficult to deal with, “Brit Kids Forced to Eat Halal School “Their illness was so freighted that the especially as serious treatment would Dinners”? principles they embodied seemed to also require critical scrutiny of the poli- What does routine hate-mongering overshadow the particulars of their cies of host countries. say about the society which passively

12 condones it? Answer: it’s mad. Well, psychologist, Dr. M. K. Hamza, finding The payouts are now about $10,000 that’s if one accepts the WHO defini- that PTSD does not adequately describe per person per year. Jane Costello tion of good mental health as “a state the suffering of Syrian children, speaks from Duke University, who has been of well-being in which every individual of a “human devastation syndrome”. studying the effects of these payments realizes his or her own potential, can To make matters worse, mental disor- on 1,420 children over twenty years, cope with the normal stresses of life, ders can gravely affect physical health. comparing the lives of those who got can work productively and fruitfully, People with PTSD are twice as likely to the payments with those who didn’t, and is able to make a contribution to have heart disease because permanent has found inter alia that, in the former her or his community.” But the mental fight/flight anxiety accelerates the heart group, figures for mental health com- health of late capitalist society is sac- rate and adrenaline production. plaints dropped by nearly a third. In rosanct, even when its politicians are Some 13,000 migrants and refugees, the mid-1970s “Mincome” experiment sociopaths and examples of their so- including more than 5,000 minors the Canadian federal government and ciopathy abound from, say, the troika have been held in awful conditions in provincial government of Manitoba and how it went about its austericide in Greek islands for over a year, with no gave a basic income to every resident Greece, through to Theresa May who idea of what their fate will be and under of the town of Dauphin. Five years wants to exempt British soldiers from threat of deportation to Turkey. Many, later, hospitalization for mental health humanitarian law. including young children, self-harm problems had dropped dramatically. Last year more than 1.4 million and attempt suicide. In 2016, the U.K. Another project in Kenya also showed people applied for asylum in Europe, government reported that refugee that mental health improved with cash mostly in Germany. More than 10 suicide attempts had reached an all- payments while, in a poor rural area percent have suffered permanent time high (nearly 400 cases) and so of Namibia, the results of a two-year changes to their personalities because has self-harming. After EU’s refugee- project exceeded expectations in terms of terrible experiences in war-torn areas warehousing deal with Turkey in an of health, school dropout rates (from including Syria, Iraq and Eritrea. Half attempt to deter people from crossing 40% to almost 0%), and a much more the Syrian refugees have mental health the Aegean Sea, more refugees than consolidated community. issues. The noxious nature of social ever are drowning: there may be fewer The usual humanitarian operation stress is highlighted in a study carried attempts but desperate people are using provides food, medical assistance and out at Maastricht University, showing flimsier boats. Yet European leaders minimal shelter but doesn’t offer se- that social exclusion increases the risk remain indifferent. And, this summer, curity or enable people to build new of psychosis by changing the brain’s far-right activists are planning to use lives. However, with a strained budget, sensitivity to the neurotransmitter do- their own boats to disrupt the work of Andrew Harper, the senior UNHCR pamine. Another finding in a range of search-and-rescue vessels. representative in Jordan, opted to give studies, which fly in the face of mali- It’s a commonplace that structural refugees cash grants so they can fend cious clichés, is that few mentally-ill factors like poverty, inequality, home- for themselves outside the camps. After migrants and refugees become violent. lessness, and discrimination create starting in Jordan, the initiative now Mental illness is inflicted on refugees feelings of insecurity and thus cause involves 1.9 million refugees in Iraq, as an indirect result of past and present and aggravate mental disorders. So, Lebanon, and Egypt, and especially practices of more privileged societies. logically, solutions should be sought in vulnerable groups like women-headed These have brought about the traumatic the system. Lack of financial security families. In Lebanon, 87,700 families reasons for leaving home, loss (espe- aggravates mental health problems in spent the money on basics and keeping cially of family members), nightmare countries that are not affected by war children in school. At the other end of journeys, and the grueling conditions or other catastrophes but the situation the scale, Harper has cut his per-person of refugee camps. Resettlement tor- is infinitely worse for refugees. State costs by two-thirds. ments—being denied culture, identity, policies for social and economic pro- In her article about Sweden’s dead-in- home, social standing, and language, tection are crucial. This is confirmed by life refugee children Rachel Aviv cites powerlessness, having to adapt to the results of projects in several parts of the Canadian philosopher Ian Hacking: a strange environment, unsanitary the world where populations were paid “What makes it possible, in such and conditions, inappropriate nutrition, something approximating to an uncon- such a civilization, for this to be a way and general hostility, not to mention ditional basic income. to be mad?” As Karl Jaspers foresaw the burdens of responsibility placed In 1996, the tribal council of the long ago, technocracy is turning on children who learn new languages Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation humans into pawns. The world’s five and cultural norms faster than their in North Carolina voted to distribute richest men each own nearly as much parents—only increase the likelihood half the profits of its casino evenly as 750 million people and are pushing of breakdown. One Texas-based neuro- among approximately 15,000 members. things like Galvanic Skin Response

13 bracelets to measure the engagement of schoolchildren and anyone not as radically regressive, racist, and reaction- (Gates), or wanting people to become cyborgs (Musk). The ary as them. This absurdly watered-down “Left” includes such implications for intelligence as an autonomous critical power leading establishment and militantly corporatist, neoliberal- are unnerving. Human rights have no place here. And without capitalist institutions and personalities as the Democratic the security of basic human rights, people tend to go mad. But Party, the arch-imperial New York Times (onetime fetid the real madness is represented by the concentrated power of hatchery of the noxious corporate uber-globalist Thomas those five men. If refugees are to be helped, an old principle Friedman), the “Public” (Pentagon?) Broadcasting System must be applied: physician, heal thyself. Meanwhile, Pervasive (a de facto arm of the Council on Foreign Relations), the Refusal Syndrome might be the only sane response to a crimi- Washington Post (a close friend of the Central Intelligence nally insane system which keeps churning out, blaming and Agency), MSNBC (which ought to change its name to punishing refugees. cp “MSDNC”), and even CNN. But calling the dismal dollar-drenched Democrats and its many media allies “The Left” is like calling the National Pork The Inauthentic Opposition Producers Association vegan. As House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told a young CNN town-hall questioner There is No Real Left Now last January, “we’re capitalist and that’s just the way it is.” I won’t waste word count demonstrating the Democrats’ cor- By Paul Street porate, imperial, and objectively white-supremacist essence During the Great Depression on the South Side of Chicago under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama—and how that essence a recurrent incident would occur when the police came to do demobilizes the party’s onetime poor and working-class base the bidding of some ghetto landlord by throwing an evicted to open the door for the ever more reactionary Republicans Black family’s belongings on the street. “Quick” the family’s to hold top elected offices. I’ve undertaken that depressing as- mother would say, “run and get the Reds.” The “Reds” were signment more times than I can recall (for my most recent the local Communists, who would rally a crowd to return contribution on that score, please see my recent essay “Beyond furniture to the apartment from which it had been removed. Inauthentic Opposition,” Counterpunch online, June 30, 2017) Communist labor militants at the time were in and around Leftish liberals like the best-selling author Thomas Frank every one of the city’s major industrial workplaces fighting to (who fell strangely under the spell of Obama in 2007–08) call form interracial industrial unions to help workers make wages for the supposed “party of the people” to abandon its “corpo- that could match rents and other living expenses. The same rate and cultural elitism” and “return” to its purported grand was true in other United States cities. mission of “expanding opportunity, fighting for social justice, Where is the contemporary U.S. version of “the Reds”? You and ensuring that workers get a fair deal.” When, the plaintive can find inspiring local analogies, but they are few and far progressive cry goes, will they learn how to win? between But it isn’t about winning for the dismal Dems, it’s about I’m always amused when I hear some Republican politi- serving corporate masters. As William Kauffman recently cian or media commentator refer to some great and powerful tried to tell Barbara Ehrenreich on Facebook, of all places: “Left,” as in “the Left won’t like Trump’s tax cut plan” or “the “The Democrats aren’t feckless, inept, or stupid, unable to Left can’t stop screeching about climate change.” What Left are ‘learn’ what it takes to win. They are corrupt. They do not want they talking about? As Noam Chomsky told David Barsamian to win with an authentically progressive program because it four years ago, “there is no real left now” in the U.S. “If you are would threaten the economic interests of their main corpo- just counting heads,” Chomsky elaborated, “there are probably rate donor base… The Democrats know exactly what they’re more people involved than in the 1960s, but they…don’t co- doing. They have a business model: sub-serving the interests alesce into a movement that can really do things.” of the corporate elite.” “We’re not supposed to say it,” Chomsky elaborated, We might add two things. First, the Democrats never were “but the Communist Party was an organized and persistent “the party of the people” (a useful corrective on that historical element. It didn’t show up for a demonstration and then score is Lance Selfa’s excellent study The Democrats: A Critical scatter so somebody else had to start something new. It was History [Haymarket, 2017]). Second, (as Frank shows in his always there and it was there for the long haul…That mental- book Listen Liberal, saddled with the unfortunate sub-title ity is basically missing [now]. And it was during the 1960s, Whatever Happened to the Party of the People?), the Dems t o o.” are captive not just to Wall Street and corporate donors but The point still holds, sadly, for the most part. also to the professional class. They channel the stuck-up values and meritocratic ideology of professionals, who believe The Ossoffied and Inauthentic Opposition (with some noble exceptions) in strict social hierarchy and do For Republicans and their right-wing FOX News, Breitbart, not listen to below their power-serving “circles of expertise” and talk radio noise machine, “The Left” refers to anything (Frank).

14 So what if Bernie Sanders would have been more likely to The imperial omission has infected many of Sanders’ defeat Trump than the depressing “lying neoliberal warmon- most passionate supporters. At “The People’s Summit” held ger” Hillary Clinton in the general election? The Democrats in Chicago last June, thousands of Sanders backers came preferred handing the presidency and Congress to the Insane together to advocate progressive social and environmental Clown President and the ever more radical right over letting policies. As the Iraq War veteran and left activist and writer a progressive neo-New Dealer into the White House. That Vincent Emmanuelle noted, they remained eerily silent was the “Inauthentic Opposition”—as the late Sheldon Wolin on the problem of imperialism. “If you’re not talking about termed in the Democrats in 2008—doing its job. U.S. Empire,” Emmanuelle writes, “you’re missing half the It made sure to try to cover its tracks by concocting two story. Bernie’s campaign was symbolic of this disconnect. convenient if empirically groundless explanations for their Progressives who seek domestic reforms must address Uncle seeming electoral dysfunction. The first excuse points to Sam’s role in the world, or they shouldn’t expect to accomplish Russia’s alleged interference in “our” purported “great democ- much. After watching and listening to several panels and dis- racy. The second justification claims falsely that Trump rode cussions from the People’s Summit, it is clear, to paraphrase a great wave of white working-class support to power (for the Bob Marley, that half the story still isn’t being told.” falsity of this narrative, see my recent essay “The Notion That the White Working Class Elected Trump is a Myth that Suits Electoralized the Ruling Class,” Truthdig, July 7, 2017). Along the way, Sanders has deepened progressives’ dys- The recent doomed special election Congressional can- functional attachment to the nation’s narrow and strictly didacy of the vapid, 30-something Jon Ossoff is a case in time-staggered election- and candidate-centered politics. Kauffman’s point. Ossoff “durifully punched one item after “The really critical thing,” the great American radical histo- another on the checklist of neoliberalism. He wanted” Jeffrey rian Howard Zinn once sagely wrote, “isn’t who’s sitting in S. Clair noted, “to end waste in government ... to trim bur- the White House, but who is sitting in—in the streets, in the densome regulations stifling the old entrepreneurial spirit… cafeterias, in the halls of government, in the factories. Who to reduce the deficit and hectored struggling black families is protesting, who is occupying offices and demonstrating— to demonstrate ‘personal responsibility’ if they wanted to get those are the things that determine what happens.” their federal benefits … He remained opaque on the subject “The only thing that’s going to ever bring about any mean- of raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour…Bernie Sanders ingful change,” Chomsky told Abby Martin in the fall of 2015 himself questioned whether Ossoff could be considered “is ongoing, dedicated, popular movements that don’t pay at- a ‘progressive.’” (St. Clair, “Democrats in the Dead Zone,” tention to the election cycle.” CounterPunch, June 23, 2017) Bernie, a longstanding Democratic Party company man Still, Ossoff set new fundraising records for a Democratic beneath claims of “independence,” was and remains about the Congressional candidate with no small help from “progres- masters’ election cycle. sives” across the country. Many on the portside regularly vote (it takes two minutes) for Green Party candidates (I do), but the Greens are hardly Berned a consistent and effective voice on the Left. They direct activ- Not that Sanders (accurately described as “pretty centrist” ist energies into the quadrennial candidate-centered electoral by no less a centrist than Obama last December) was or is extravaganza yet could not even crack 1% in the 2016 presi- much to write home about from a seriously Left perspective. dential election. The party’s all-time water high mark is 2.7% Consistent with early warnings from unruly radicals like when it ran the progressive hero Ralph Nader in 2000. the present writer, Bernie never wavered from his sheep- dogging promise to deliver his supporters to the corporate Faked war Democrats and their dreary standard-bearer, the “lying Part of how folks fall prey to the illusion of the dismal neoliberal warmonger” (Adolph Reed, Jr.) Hillary Clinton. Democrats as “the Left” is that the party is often adept at leftish Sanders’ occasional and carefully hedged claim to be a “demo- “movement” affectation – especially when it is out of power cratic socialist” was contradicted among other ways by his and feels the need to pose as a party and/or movement of the embrace (with some minor qualifications) of the U.S. military people. With MSNBC’s arch-Russophobe Rachel Madoff in empire. As the principled and actual democratic socialist Dr. the propaganda vanguard, Democratic elites responded to the Martin Luther King, Jr. famously warned in the spring of Trump ascendancy by concocting a fake “Resistance” devoid 1967, failure to tackle the giant U.S. war budget (a vast mecha- of any real progressive meaning beyond “bipartisan” opposi- nism of upward wealth transfer) means that you can’t pay for tion to Donald Trump. This pseudo-left faux-movement’s poverty-ending progressive transformation and social justice leading outposts include the transparent AstroTurf outfits at home. Bernie F-35 Sanders has unsurprisingly played along MoveOn, the Town Hall Project, and Indivisible, all of which with the Blame Russia card, helping his putative plutocratic function as what a correspondent calls “mechanism[s] for co- enemies keep control of the party. opting the anti-Trump resistance and channeling opposition

15 to Trump into support for the Democratic Party.” Democratic Party-affiliated uber-professional-class liberals By one activist’s account in Monterey, California, Indivisible and neoliberals. “has had a devastating impact on local organizing. A broad- The ivory tower’s gatekeepers tolerate only a scattered based and diverse coalition was developing here in the first few smattering of actual, Red-blooded Leftists. The last thing months after the election; it collapsed as soon as Indivisible the money garnered from skyrocketing tuition is earmarked appeared.” Further: “Indivisible is a well-funded AstroTurf for is the employment of professors who would encourage group. It walks and talks exactly like it would if it had been students to look critically at neoliberal “higher education” deliberately designed by some joint DNC-COINTELPRO regime and the broader structures of class rule and racial and committee to channel popular outrage into support for the imperial oppression it serves. Academic hiring and tenure Democratic Party and for a war with Russia.” committees who have any doubt about the educational au- I’ve received similar reports from other parts of the country. thorities’ willingness to punish professors for becoming They all jibe with my own experience in and around Iowa “too political” in the wrong kinds of ways can read about a City, where an initial upsurge of popular protest at Trump’s growing number of cases in which Left academics (including election and inauguration simply collapsed in the spring as even tenured ones like Ward Churchill) have been viciously

Still from an Anti-Ossoff ad.

Russiagate took hold. This was the Democratic Party playing mortar-boarded: stripped of their positions and banned (like its venerable role as “the graveyard of social movements.” Norman Finkelstein and Stephen Salatia) from the academy for transparently political reasons. Mortar-Boarded Academia’s shift towards adjunct teaching and temporary Part of what prevents the emergence of a serious Left in contracts for a growing lumpen-professoriat creates a class of place like Iowa City (a classic university company town) is sub-academicians whose likelihood of openly challenging re- the soul-numbing power of academia. Among the many lu- ceived doctrines within or beyond the classroom is reduced by dicrous things spouted on the U.S. right, few assertions are the extreme tenuousness and precarity of their employment. more ridiculous than the claim that the nation’s universities Not that tenure makes much difference. By the time most and colleges are leftist hotbeds. There are probably more purportedly Left academics get it, they’ve given up the game. former State Department, CIA, and Pentagon officials than They’re not about to jeopardize their golden tickets by profess- serious Marxists and left anarchists holding teaching posi- ing in seriously radical ways. Here in Iowa City, I witnessed tions in U.S. colleges and universities today. The social scienc- “left” academicians respond to the rise of a local Occupy es and humanities are infested with tepid, Identity-politicized camp in the fall of 2011 with sheer classist disdain.

16 Union-Bossed Alphabetized Things are even worse for real Leftists in the ever more There are a large number of groups that call themselves marginalized U.S. labor “movement,” whose purge of its best “Marxist” in the U.S. – an alphabet soup whose various names and most radical organizers six decades ago is part of why and sectarian tendencies can be reviewed on Wikipedia. The it currently enlists less than 11% of U.S. wage and salary- most serious and healthy among these organizations are the earners (down from more than 40% in the 1950s), including ISO, Socialist Alternative, and Solidarity (I know good people just 6.8% in the private sector. Former Leftist trade-unionists in all three). Socialist Alternative has grown considerably in tell horror stories about their efforts to fight for workers in recent years, drawing strength from its successful campaign to U.S. unions today. The ones who haven’t quit or been fired elect the Marxist community-college teacher Kshama Sawant from soul-crushing organizations like the Service Employees to the Seattle City Council. The ISO continues to hold a signif- International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of icant annual Socialism conference and boasts the often smart State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) require and informative Website Socialist Worker. But none of the na- anonymity before they’ll tell you how their bureaucratic union tion’s officially Marxist groups have anything close to a large superiors relentlessly betray the proletariat and sabotage the membership. Some of them almost seem designed to make class struggle. people hate Marxism. Many of them spend more time tearing each other apart in sectarian squabbling than in organizing or Siloed inspiring anyone to fight the evils of capital. A vast panoply of outwardly and sometimes substantively Even the worst of these groups are healthier than the vast progressive advocacy, policy, and service organizations can Internet army of unaffiliated hyper-alienated Americans (in- be found across the U.S. But, as Les Leopold recently noted, cluding a large and disturbing contingent of paranoid, con- they are badly crippled by single-issue-ism, related to do their spiratorial, and 9/11-obsessed “Truthers”) who identify as Left budgetary dependence on private foundations as they rage, bitch, and moan online. A number of Sanders supporters have migrated into DSA, “For the last generation, progressives have organized them- the Democratic Socialists of America, which defines “so- selves into issue silos, each with its own agenda. Survival cialism” as little more than good union contracts and civil depends on fundraising (largely from private foundations) rights. DSA pursues an “inside strategy” seeking to magically based on the uniqueness of one’s own silo. Each needs to transform the Democratic Party into a champion of working proclaim that its issue is the existential threat, be it climate people. Its online video “Thanks, Capitalism” says nothing change, police violence, abortion rights or health care. The net about capitalism’s destruction of livable ecology or about its result of this Darwinian struggle is a fractured landscape of evil twin imperialism. activity. The creativity, talent and skill are there in abundance, The nominally Trotskyist group Socialist Alternative got but the coherence and common purpose among groups is behind Sanders in the Democratic primaries and clung to the not” (Portisde, June 3, 2017). fantastic notion that he might run as a third-party candidate At a much-ballyhooed “anti-Trump” gathering of young once the neoliberal Democrats defeated him. An Oakland, liberals and progressives I attended in Iowa City last February, California comrade reported that SA leaders told members to one earnest young Trump resister” after another came up to keep their mouths shut “about his imperialist foreign policy, speak listlessly about the little corner of the grant-funded ac- reactionary stance on immigration, refusal to amplify the tivist and human service universe they inhabited. The meeting needs/demands of people of color, etc.” (Oakland Socialist, was an epic flop, distressing to behold as the monstrously November 23, 2015). plutocratic, racist, sexist, and eco-cidal Trump atrocity was Left anarchism seems as fragmented, marginal, and sectari- setting up shop in Washington. an as the Marxist left, though I did recently receive the follow- There are many multi-issue non-partisan progressive policy, ing message from 63-year old Gordon Glick: “Young people lobbying, and protest groups in the Saul Alinsky and Citizen are coming into the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) Action tradition across the nation. (An excellent example is as societal and economic conditions deteriorate. I live in the Citizens for Community Improvement in Iowa). They tend Pacific Northwest, and we have several active Branches and towards a tepid reformism that carries no further than Bernie many Wobblies at large…we are not restricted to one ideology Sanders at the leftmost. Their 501c3 (non-profit) status pre- except anti-capitalism.” vents from openly identifying as Democratic Party-affiliated That’s good to hear but we have yet to see the re-emergence groups but that is what they are. Alinsky, it is worth recall- of a Left worthy of the label. Such a left would seek nothing ing, was an anti-Marxist who told organizers to appeal to less than what Dr. King called “the real issue to be faced” self-interest, not socialism and working-class solidarity Real beyond “superficial” matters like the color or gender of a select radicals who want to keep their jobs know to tread carefully number of people in corporate suites and elected offices: “the when they work in the “progressive” non-profit sector. radical reconstruction of society itself.” It would be a highly

17 organized and durable through thick-and-thin movement The Fight for $15 had significant origins in the sparkplug with resilient institutions and cadres dedicated to revolution- activism of anti-capitalists who organized Starbucks and fast- ary transformation. wood workers in major U.S. cities. It was championed effec- tively by Socialist Alternative and Ms. Sawant in Seattle. But Some Leftish Developments the movement appears to have been largely hijacked by the None of the notable progressive and leftish phenomena of SEIU and it’s not all that radical given the fact that full-time recent years – the Wisconsin Rebellion, Occupy, the Fight year-round work at $15 an hour garners an annual income less for $15, Black Lives Matter (BLM), the Sanders phenom- than half the minimally adequate basic family budget for a enon, Standing Rock – were hatched by any established and single parent with one child in every U.S. city today. organized part of “the Left.” Assorted anti-capitalist Leftists An Ironic and Deadly Void led many of its campsites, but Occupy was called into action The relative (not absolute) Left void is disconcerting by the vaguely anarchist Canadian magazine Adbusters. amidst a New Gilded Age in an ever more openly plutocratic Occupy left no real lasting movement infrastructure behind. nation where: the top tenth of the upper 1 Percent owns as We have no idea if the Occupy moment might have become much wealth as the bottom 90 percent; 15 million children a movement without the repression it faced in late 2011, but (21% of all U.S. children) live at less than the federal govern- Occupiers’ excessive reluctance to building lasting institu- ment’s notoriously inadequate poverty level (more than 1 in tional structures and to formulate concrete demands were 10 U.S. children ages 0–9 is living at less than half that level); certainly significant factors behind its rapid disappearance. half the population is either poor or near-poor and without The Wisconsin uprising earlier the same year arose from any assets; millions drink from poisoned water systems; an public sector unions’ and Democratic legislators’ defensive re- imperial military devours more than half of all discretion- sponse to ultra-right-wing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s ary federal spending and accounts for nearly half the world’s assault on public workers’ collective bargaining rights. Leftists military spending; more people are incarcerated (in extremely flocked to the giant marches in Madison, Wisconsin in the racially disproportionate ways) than in any nation in history name of the working class, but union officials and the state’s (a curious achievement for the self-described homeland and Inauthentic Opposition party cancelled the popular rebel- headquarters of “liberty”); an unelected “deep state” dictator- lion after a few weeks, crushing its radical potential. They ship of money and empire is leading planet over the envi- defanged the struggle by channeling popular energies into a ronmental cliff through the championing of endless growth doomed major party-electoralist effort to recall Walker and and attendant “anthropogenic” (really capitalogenic) climate replace him with the same dismal Democrat (Tommy Barret) destruction. he’d already crushed in 2010. The top thing missing in the “U.S. Left” isn’t a positive BLM emerged as heavily Identity-Politicized Black Queer policy agenda or a vision of an alternative society. You can online activists’ response to the racist murders of Trayvon find both of those on the American portside, contrary to the Martin and Mike Brown. It has inspired and engaged many standard sneering claim that lefties are only “against” things Leftists but it has been sadly subject to taming by (neo)liberal and not “for” anything. The main deficit is organizational and foundations and to working supinely with Democratic politi- institutional. cos. Its primary presence seems to be on the Internet, not in In the year marking the 100th anniversary of the Russian Black communities. It shows few signs of becoming a militant Revolution, it is worth remembering that Lenin’s famous 1902 force for multiracial working-class solidarity, Black revolu- pamphlet What is to be Done? said nothing about reforms tion, or revolutionary change. under capitalism (or under Russian Tsarist rule) or on what The Standing Rock struggle arose from North Dakota an alternative, post-capitalist society might look like. It was Sioux leaders’ struggle to protect water safety and ancestral focused entirely on the question of revolutionary organiza- rights against the eco-cidal Dakota Access Pipeline It became tion. You don’t have to be a Leninist to take heed. an inspiring symbol both of Native American solidarity and of This gap must be addressed in what is still the world’s most environmentalist opposition to the fossil fuel industry. But its powerful and destructive capitalist state, in a time when five Sioux leaders demonstrated no interest in building anything absurdly rich people now possess as much wealth as the like an anti-capitalist movement. They stood down and dis- bottom half of humanity, and the still U.S.-headquartered mantled their resistance camp before Donald Trump could global profits system is speeding humanity to extinction. try to clear it by force. The looming specter of extinction through geocide may give The Sanders phenomenon was set off by, well, Sanders, with ironic validation to Fukuyama’s notion of (neo)liberal capital- some nudging perhaps from the left-liberal group Progressive ism as “the end of history.” Democrats of America). And it wasn’t all that left. Neither is “If there is not future for a radical mass movement in our the Fight for $15’s main sponsor the SEIU, a top-down union time,” Istvan Meszaros rightly argued 15 years ago, “there can that is close to the Democratic Party and a longtime dedicated be no future for humanity itself.” enemy of single-payer health insurance Some good news: there’s no shortage of potential recruits

18 for a real Left. A recent Harvard University survey finds that lete, because it was designed many, many years ago….We’re 51 percent than half of U.S. Millennials (18-to-29-year-olds) supposed to protect countries. But a lot of these countries “do not support capitalism,” intimately related to Harvard’s aren’t paying what they’re supposed to be paying, which I finding that half of the cohort thinks “the American Dream is think is very unfair to the United States.” dead” for them. Imagine. cp In one regard, Trump’s statement echoes a fundamental misunderstanding of what NATO is now and of the funda- Paul Street’s latest book is They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy mental reason it was originally created, both of which are (Paradigm, 2014) the same yet manifested somewhat differently. The American Interest—a primarily neocon journal dedicated to projecting their version of what the interests of the U.S. are—suggested The Military Beast in a January 2016 article that opponents of NATO included the following political views.

Can NATO Still Make First, there are those who support an active U.S. interna- America Great? tional security role but view NATO as obsolete, and even as an obstacle to building a more relevant alliance structure. By Ron Jacobs Second, there are of course those on both the Right and the Left who, for different reasons, believe that the United Like so many other children of the Cold War, I grew States should pull back from its international commit- up accepting the definition of the North Atlantic Treaty ments and global responsibilities. Third, there are hawkish Organization (NATO) provided by the U.S. government and internationalists who believe that NATO unnecessarily its pliant media. In other words, I believed that NATO was a constrains U.S. international freedom of action. mutual defense treaty; a joint endeavor mutually agreed to by neighbors helping neighbors with a common goal of making If I were to place the Trumpists inside these categories, it the world better. According to this propaganda, NATO was would be a mix of those with isolationist tendencies and those created from a joint and equally shared desire to keep Europe who are hawkish internationalists. If one is to believe Trump’s free and democratic, just like we were told the United States “America First” rhetoric, it would seem to locate Trump was. The first time this understanding of NATO was chal- himself well within this latter group. After all, it’s not like lenged was when I attended a protest in Frankfurt am Main he thinks U.S. forces should not be fighting wars around the (where my father the Cold Warrior was stationed as part of world; it’s more that he thinks U.S. forces should be leading the U.S. military’s NATO commitment) against the U.S. war the charge and be able to invade, murder and occupy at will on the Vietnamese. A German college student with a protest without any constraints from previous agreements reached by sign handed me a leaflet written in German. Using my inter- the United Nations or NATO. mediate skills with the German language, I figured out that Like the Monroe Doctrine written to declare US dominion the writers of the leaflet considered U.S. forces stationed in over the western hemisphere, NATO is a child of the United Germany to be occupation forces. This new perspective led States’ self-manufactured belief in its specialness. That is, me to begin reconsidering the nature of the military beast NATO is but one more spawn of the conceit of American called NATO. exceptionalism. Coming into being around the same time as During his May 2017 state visit to several European nations the United Nations and the Marshall Plan, the North Atlantic Donald Trump managed to embarrass the U.S. power elites Treaty Organization was designed with the intention of pro- with his boorish and ignorant behavior. Whether it was his jecting US military power in western Europe and as a bulwark rather bizarre photo session with the Pope or his appearing to against the Soviet Union—the other big winner in World War shove the Macedonian minister out of the way during another Two. In 1948, when NATO was first established, a wave of such session, the establishment media wags could not express anti-colonialism was sweeping the world. Furthermore, any their embarrassment often enough. It appeared that Donald anticolonial movement in the former colonies of Washington’s Trump was the modern personification of the so-called ugly new allies was considered to be under Soviet influence. American. In a culture often driven by the obnoxious per- Consequently, that meant they were an enemy of the United sonality, Donald Trump was continuing his long-running States and its new alliance. In addition, other movements in act, only this time it was on a global stage and supposedly non-colonial nations—like the Greek partisans fighting to reflected on the rest of his fellow citizens. More interesting overthrow the monarchy—were also considered part of the and potentially more historically important however, were perceived Soviet drive to rule the world. In actuality, these Trump’s series of contradictory messages about the future of movements were usually leftist and anti-imperialist, but not NATO. necessarily Soviet pawns. There was no way Washington and Foremost among those comments was this: “I said a long London were going to allow an anti-imperialist movement to time ago that NATO had problems. Number one it was obso- sweep the planet, especially when Washington was planning

19 on becoming the new imperial power. Among other manifes- immediate period following the end of the Soviet Union and tations, this is clear from both nations support for the royalist Warsaw Pact, NATO leadership began to expand its reach. and fascist elements of the Greek civil war; some of which had Newly autonomous nations of the former Soviet Union and actively supported the Nazis during World War Two. Further member nations of the defunct Warsaw Pact were considered manifestations of this anti-communism were the various for inclusion in the organization. When eastern and western covert operations like those undertaken by the newly insti- Germany reunified in 1990, NATO began its new envelop- tuted Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the Italian election ment of Europe in earnest. This was despite a well-publicized of 1947; elections which the communists would have other- statement from U.S. and German officials that there would wise won. be no further NATO expansion towards Russia’s borders; a It may be difficult for some modern readers to understand statement which was quickly ignored. It soon became obvious just how deeply and intensely anti-communism informed the that the descendants of the Dulles brothers in Washington foreign and domestic policy of the United States after World still considered the role of NATO to be the containment of War Two. Even comparing the current fear of “Islamic terror- Moscow, even if their ideological enemy was gone from that ism” with the anti-communism of the period in question fails capital. In fact, the true nature of its purpose unveiled it as part to do the communist-phobia of that era in question justice. of the machinery designed to prevent Russian influence from This fear of communism was institutionally driven by cor- encroaching into Europe. Despite the eventual full-throttled porate America, which saw the appeal anti-capitalism might turn to NATO expansion in the later 1990s, there were those have on an exploited workforce. Driving the institutional fear in defense and diplomatic circles opposed to the move. Their were certain individuals: men like Richard Nixon, Joseph main argument was that doing so would make Russia uneasy McCarthy, and John Foster and Allen Dulles come imme- and possibly precipitate a new rivalry and consequent mili- diately to mind. The inclusion of the Dulles brothers in this tary buildup and arms race. Just like in 1955 when the Soviets shortlist is directly related to NATO’s construction as an anti- suggested they be allowed to join the organization and were Soviet alliance. Even though career diplomat Dean Acheson denied, it was the anti-Moscow element of the West’s foreign is most often cited as a primary architect of NATO, it was the policy establishment that once more decided a military Dulles brothers who imprinted their anti-communist/anti- rivalry with Moscow was preferred to some kind of agreement Soviet template on the organization. focused on making peace. Given this, Russia’s request to join Most of NATO’s western press coverage from its inception the alliance even as a partial member was denied again. until the early 1990s speaks of a mutual agreement by several Another aspect of the post-Soviet expansion of NATO was western European nations, Canada, Britain and the United graphically and bloodily displayed in the lands of the former States to defend one another if one of them is attacked. As Yugoslavia in spring 1999. After a series of demands from noted previously, any attack that might have taken place was Washington and NATO that were considered ultimatums to assumed to come from the Soviet Union. After all, it was that surrender by the government of Serbia, NATO forces led by nation which was the biggest threat to Washington’s dreams of the United States began an aerial bombardment of Serbian world hegemony. Even under this guise of mutual and equal and Kosovar installations, towns and cities. This attack was commitment, however, it becomes clear that any such defense part of a new mission for NATO; using its member militar- was certain to be under the direction and command of the ies to attack enemies of the United States under the pretense leaders in Washington DC and the Pentagon. This was appar- of humanitarian intervention. Although the first such foray ent in the postwar arrangements in the command hierarchy was inside Europe, the subsequent military actions took place that was established within the organization and in the nature in nations quite far from Brussels’ NATO headquarters. The of its funding. Another telling point was the denial of mem- first was in Afghanistan, where NATO troops continue to bership to the Soviet Union, which first suggested just such a occupy and fight in parts of the country. The second was in move in 1955. Perhaps most telling was the alliance’s insistence Libya, where a multi-sided war rages in the wake of the NATO on opting for a nuclear defense instead of a conventional one. removal of its leader, Muammar Gaddafi. All three of these This meant that those nations with nuclear weapons would engagements involved the murders of civilians and other non- dominate the alliance; in other words, the United States and combatants. All three of them met varying degrees of opposi- the United Kingdom would be in command. Of those two tion from Moscow and Beijing, along with other nations. nations, it would be the U.S. that controlled the nuclear trigger. Anti-imperialists and other opposed to NATO can dream Despite the clearly imperialist intention and practice of that the Donald Trump White House will end NATO. NATO in its original incarnation, NATO’s reinvention after However, they would most likely be deluding themselves. the dissolution of the Soviet Union made that intention even Trump’s criticism of NATO is centered on who pays for the clearer. Instead of searching for a way to end the mutual maintenance of the militaries involved and the alliance’s ad- defense pact known as NATO, its leaders began searching for ministration. His calls for greater contributions from other a new rationale for its continuation. After a speculative dis- signees to the alliance do not indicate a lesser participation cussion in the media and various western legislatures in the from the United States. Instead, they presume (and are a call

20 for) an increase in military spending on the part of all nations by Trump and two days before the G20 Summit in Hamburg, involved. Given that the U.S. defense industry remains a Germany, is an indication of the U.S. defense industry’s role primary (if not the primary) element of the U.S. economy and in NATO’s continued existence. An earlier agreement had if one accepts the argument that it is the defense industry that already established an arms sale program that permitted guides U.S. foreign policy, the true motivation for Trump’s NATO members to acquire and share U.S.-made military demand becomes clearer. Trump and those who think other hardware with other members of the alliance. This latter ini- NATO member nations should contribute more money and tiative, signed into being on January 30, 2015 under the Obama armaments to NATO are merely pimping for the defense administration, is known as the SmartDefense program and industry; the war machine that continues to drive the US was designed in large part to ensure that the US arms indus- economy. If Trump gets his way, and every NATO member try “remains a major player in the European defense market.” nation were to meet Trump’s call for a contribution equal (DefenseNews, 2/4/2105) As of late 2016, at least two NATO to two percent of their national budget, overall European member nations—United Kingdom and Italy—were among

NATO summit. Photo: NATO defense spending would increase by at least $100 billion an- the top thirteen purchasers of U.S. manufactured armaments. nually. If Trump and his administration want to get more than Donald Trump is known for making contradictory state- their share of that money for the U.S. defense industry, he can ments, often within the same speech. His remarks concern- do little but encourage NATO to continue. Otherwise, the U.S. ing NATO are no exception to this pattern. As I write this, share of those funds might shrink, with European and Chinese Trump just completed a visit to Poland to begin his second weapons manufacturers gaining the difference. Trump seems visit to Europe since his January 2017 inauguration. As noted to have realized this fact and is acting accordingly. in the opening of this article, Trump’s first visit was marred Indeed, on July 6, 2017 the Associated Press reported that by various controversies. Beyond the etiquette miscues the Polish defense minister and Donald Trump had agreed to and unusually boorish behavior in certain instances, there an eight billion dollar sale of Patriot missiles to Poland. The was Trump’s failure to restate Washington’s commitment announcement, made the day before a state visit to Poland to the mutual defense commitment stated in Article Five of

21 the NATO Charter. This failure, intentional or not, set off remains true no matter what his isolationist supporters might alarm bells, especially amongst the liberal/neoconservative hope. That being so, the question then is not whether the U.S. establishment, whose dependence on the status quo is what military will be stationed around the world, including in the informs their entire political and economic existence. When NATO countries, but under what guise that presence will be stacked atop Trump’s friendly comments during the campaign maintained. Will NATO continue to be the military vehicle about Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin, what appeared to for the Empire in Europe and elsewhere or will Trump and be his lackluster support for NATO stoked fears of a major his group of imperial bureaucrats come up with a different realignment in the way the powerful run the world. model to accomplish a similar end? In other words, will they As if to allay those fears, one of the first things Trump said re-invent the wheel if that wheel is still functioning how it was in Poland during his most recent European visit was quite designed to function? No matter what happens—and at this explicit in this regard: “The United States has demonstrated writing it looks like NATO will remain—Washington’s drive not merely with words, but with its actions, that we stand for world hegemony in Europe and beyond will continue. cp firmly behind Article 5, the mutual defense commitment.” Ron Jacobs is the author of Daydream Sunset: Sixties In this same speech, he also echoed the neoliberal/neocon Counterculture in the Seventies published by CounterPunch conceit that Russia needs to stop meddling in other nations’ Books. affairs. Among the other nations he listed were at least a few that the United States has been “meddling” in for at least as long as Russia—Syria, Ukraine, and Iran. Essentially calling the U.S. intervention in those nations a civilizing force, he Skin Problems & called on Russia to join the U.S. and other such “responsible That Old Time Religion nations” in their fight to “save the West.” Besides the disturb- ingly chauvinistic appeal to some kind of western supremacy, the expressed sentiment certainly sounds like a continua- White Supremacy, Not tion of Washington’s ongoing battle of words and intent with Jesus, May be Your God Moscow. Given this, it does not sound like much will change By Lawrence Ware in terms of the historic relationship between these two capitals. Furthermore, if NATO is to be the projection of US Recently I decided to visit a popular, contemporary church power in the world and Russia is to be its primary opponent, that tried earnestly to be neither a ‘black church’ nor a ‘white then it would be pointless to fundamentally alter that. church.’ After being conspicuously silent about race and Much was made about the meeting between Trump and racism after the Charleston shootings some time ago (the Putin at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. While anti- church did not so much as post on their social media sites that imperialist, anti-fascist, pro-immigrant, and other protesters they were praying for the victims. Instead, they posted videos were attacked by heavily armed police outside the Red Zone about their upcoming sermon series), the black pastor of this created by security forces to keep the people away from the multicultural church decided to tackle the issue of race in a rulers of the capitalist world, those rulers discussed how to sermon series—I had to attend. maintain their control. The contradictions of this endeavor After a praise and worship session that took great care to are plenty, with different power blocs and individual nations be neither overly black in the singing style nor song selection, vying for domination over the rest. While the United States the pastor began the sermon by saying something I’ve heard continues to hold on to its role as the leading capitalist many times before—something I hoped I would never hear economy, the truth of the matter is that that hold is consid- come out the mouth of a person whose lived experience of ered tenuous. However, it has minimal concern over losing race in America provides a lens through which to read the its place as the largest and most lethal military power. NATO Bible critically. He said, “Racism isn’t a skin problem, it’s a sin remains one of the numerous means created to ensure this problem.” dynamic continues. By this he meant that it could be remedied by interpersonal Despite the interconnectedness of the world capitalist interactions with people of different ethnicities. He went on to economy, the nation-state is not dead. In fact, it seems to be provide possible solutions to racism. He suggested that people experiencing a rebirth in this second decade of the twenty-first of different races should have dinner together and engage in century. The Russian assertion of its territorial and national conversation about their lived experience. White folks in the aspirations, the British exit from the European Union, the rise crowd clapped their hands approvingly. Black folks in the au- of nationalist political parties, and the occupancy of the U.S. dience shook their head as if they had just heard words from White House by “America-First” Donald Trump are all indi- on high. cators of this. Donald Trump’s campaign promise to “make Many people go to church to get prayer. Yet, as a philoso- America great again” certainly includes the maintenance and pher and ordained minister who tries to use my two call- expansion of the U.S. Empire. as part of the “greatness.” This ings to push people to address racism and inequality in this

22 country, I left church needing someone to pray be back into 1: The Prosperity Gospel a peaceful place—especially when I saw the make up of the Part of what’s so insidious about capitalism is its malleabil- church. It was full of black Christians. This was clearly not a ity. In prosperity theology, the notion of communal liberation “black church.” from social oppression has been combined with capitalistic The Black Church notions of individualized wealth creation. As a result, libera- tion now means access to wealth and social status. Historically, black churches have played a unique role in In the 1970s and 1980s, Kenneth Copeland, Frederick American life. More than any other institution, these houses Price, and Kenneth Hagin used the burgeoning platform of of worship were where black folks could consistently go televangelism to popularize a problematic conception of the to find comfort, affirmation, and community. Hymns and gospel. Contemporarily, preachers like T.D. Jakes, Joel Osteen, spirituals gave voice to our cries as they soothed our souls. and Creflo Dollar articulate a version of the prosperity gospel Loving embraces and words of kindness buttressed us against grounded in a postmodern, self-help hermeneutic to millions a culture that communicated hostility toward our lips, hips, of people. and skin pigmentation. When oppressed people are told that God wants them to be In the words of W.E.B. Du Bois, it is the only black institu- “blessed and highly favored” or that they need to “take back tion that remains “unbought and unbossed.” Therefore, it is what the devil stole from them,” they are being fed the idea no surprise that these places of worship were ground zero for that capitalistic gains are the goal of religious life. Grace is black movements seeking positive social change, and it is this measured by the size of one’s bank account, and faith is de- activism that made the physical spaces that house black con- termined by one’s ability to attain creature comforts. Creflo gregations targets of white supremacist violence. Dollar has gone so far as to say that the only way one can have What is colloquially called ‘The Black Church’ is actually influence in America is through signs of wealth, and that is many communities of faith that share a cultural heritage and part of the reason why he needed a new multimillion-dollar has historically been populated by people of African descent. jet. (God would clearly be displeased if a preacher flew coach.) There is neither formal connection nor intentional structure Thousands of black preachers saw the success of this type to these tangentially connected, mostly protestant churches. of preaching, and were influenced by its message. As a result, What all of these churches do have in common is that their many black churches are so tied to an understanding of bless- very existence speaks to the ability of black people to perse- edness and liberation grounded in personal success that they vere despite a white supremacist culture—but let’s not sanitize have difficulty galvanizing collective social action. On any history. given Sunday, a version of the prosperity gospel is preached Historians put the percentage of churches that actively from hundreds of black pulpits. This mishandling of the supported Martin Luther King, Jr. at around 15%. Many gospel keeps many black Christians from thinking produc- clergy were critical of the Southern Christian Leadership tively about communal social liberation. Conference. There were concerns that King was moving too quickly, and that he was only interested in publicity. There 2: Adoption of Church Growth Models were also conservative parishioners in certain churches who Adopting the church growth model of ecclesiastical opera- did not want their middle-class existence (and lives) endan- tion undermines progressive social action as well. The church gered by the actions of “radical” clergy. When King started to growth model, popularized by conservative religious think focus on the North by asking hard questions about economic tanks like The Barna Group and The Francis A. Schaeffer inequality and the war in Vietnam, divisions in the black Institute, emphasizes making the worship experience pal- community only deepened. atable and entertaining. This model prioritizes growing a There has never been a unified, holistic position taken by church numerically and financially, not organizing for social ALL black churches on the issue of civil rights. Yet, while action or political advocacy. The goal is to create as large a there were always secular elements in civil rights movements, church as possible. There is a focus on providing “cradle to it has rarely been almost exclusively secular. The philosophical the grave” services for your membership, treating the church rationale for these movements was expressed with religious like a business enterprise. You rarely look outside the walls of language, and the black church played a pivotal role as a place the church. The few times you engage your community, you to meet and organize. Why, now, when a new civil rights do so for either evangelical efforts (that is, to share the Gospel movement is gaining momentum as a result of highly pub- of Jesus Christ) or to engage in brief moments of charitable licized police murders of unarmed black men and women, is outreach. Whereas the church was a place for people to be there relative quiet from some black churches? Why are these pushed to confront the harsh realities of race and racism in churches reactive in the face of social injustice instead of pro- America, it is now a place where you go to hear an encourag- active? Why does it appear that black pastors are hesitant to ing sermon that will help you achieve your personal (often support the #BlackLivesMatter movement? I think there are economic or romantic) goals. three reasons.

23 This approach leads to pastors that are concerned about In The Exodus Project: Why Some Black Women are pushing their people too far. If there is too much talk about Stepping Out on Religion—and Others Should Too, Candace topics that are unpleasant, they risk losing members (and L. M. Gorham notes that women are the lifeblood of black their economic base). This leads to black pastors who preach ecclesiastical communities, but men hold most positions of entertaining sermons lacking in prophetic critique and socio- power. She points out that there are still many pulpits that logical depth. We emphasize how to achieve God’s blessings women cannot enter. She is right. If black churches want and overcome personal difficulty, but fail to confront systemic to be morally consistent, they must be intersectional. One injustices. This leaves black Christians ill equipped to respond cannot demand justice in one arena and perpetuate injustice to assaults upon black dignity from a white supremacist in another. In other words, many black churches have allowed culture. the damaging influence of white supremacy to damage their prophetic witness. In order to understand that influence, we 3: Patriarchy need to turn our lens toward the ‘white church’—especially in Today’s activists are intersectional. They seek links in light of the rise of Donald Trump. systems of oppression. As a result, many are unwilling to work White Evangelicals and Donald Trump Two weeks into Donald Trump’s presidency, I had to turn off the news alerts on my phone. Each time I received a news alert, I would get anxious because I did not know what the hell 45 was going to do next. He had already tried to ban folks from coming into the country, and his inner circle of advisors were looking more and more like characters out of an episode of 24—so I decided to engage in self-care. I deleted all the news apps off my device. In the past few months, America has had a constitutional crises because of the attempted expansion of executive privi- lege with, lets call it what it is, the ‘Muslim ban.’ We have seen a stark increase in ICE raids targeting ‘illegal immigrants.’ Further, we have seen a failed attempt to strip millions of Trump and the evangelical leaders. Photo: White House. Americans of their health coverage. This, ironically, was hap- pening during the MLK holiday, even though King once said: with institutions, like some black churches, that they see as “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the morally compromised. most shocking and inhumane.” Many black pastors decry racism and economic injustice All this points to a clear fact: Donald Trump is an evil man while supporting ecclesiastical policies grounded in patriar- who engages in evil behavior and was put in office by evil chy. They think the Bible supports their position. Indeed, Paul people. uses masculine language in 1st Timothy 3: 1 and 2 when he I don’t know how anyone can see what he is doing and says “if a man desires the position of a bishop, he desires a judge him as either competent or working for the best interest good work” and “a bishop then must be…the husband of one of everyone in this country. To see his actions and approve wife” (NKJV). These passages appear to endorse marginal- of them uncovers a deep moral deficiency. No one thinking izing women in the church. That is a misreading of the text. clearly should see what is happening at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave Paul is expressing his personal preference in this pericope, a and be pleased. preference shaped by a viciously patriarchal culture. Further, That’s why I was confused by what I heard from a leader in many scholars argue that Paul was addressing an issue specific the white evangelical community. to the congregation that received the letter. In any case, we “I think evangelicals have found their dream president,” misread the text if we infer that all women are precluded from Jerry Falwell, Jr., president of Liberty University, said on the working in ministry. Fox News show “Justice With Judge Jeanine.” In the 1980s, after being taken to task by womanist theo- Falwell said “reuniting Israel with America” and placing logians, James Cone admitted he made a mistake by placing “people of faith” in the administration were reasons evangeli- an emphasis on men in A Black Theology of Liberation. In cals were supportive of Trump. “In fact,” said Judge Jeanine the 20th Anniversary edition, he courageously includes essays “78% of white evangelicals said they approved of the Job from Delores Williams and Rosemary Radford Reuther that Trump is doing in the White House.” critique his silence about misogyny in the church. Like Cone, That took me by surprise—but it shouldn’t have. According many black clergy need to confront their patriarchy. to the Pew Research Center, 78% of white evangelicals—that

24 is to say, white folks who say they love a brown skinned, first a sin problem that we can solve by being kinder to each other century Palestinian radical, approve of Trump’s first 100 days serves the purposes of white supremacy because it does not in office. force white folks to come to terms with the way they may For all of their talk about embodying the love of Jesus contribute to institutional racism in the decisions they make Christ, the actions of white evangelicals drown out their at work and the way they vote at the polls. words. They may say ‘love the sinner but hate the sin;’ yet, If you attend a Christian church, black or white, that has how they treat gay, queer, and trans folks let me know there is little to say in support of the movement for black lives, if nothing but hate in their hearts for people they claim to love. your pastor has called for prayer in regard to unity but has They may say they are ‘pro-life.’ but the way they vote and not pushed the congregation to engage in social protests to who they support informs me that they are hypocrites com- address the systemic nature of racial injustice, then white su- fortable with stripping away healthcare from people ravished premacy, not Jesus, may be your god. If racism is, indeed, a by illness while they turn a blind eye to the way the police sin problem and not a skin problem, then someone needs to take black life with little more than a slap on the wrist as pun- repent. And by someone, I mean America. cp ishment. They may say they are not racist, but they, as a block, Lawrence Ware is a professor of philosophy and diversity approve of a man who is unapologetic in his racist rhetoric coordinator for Oklahoma State University’s Ethics Center. and white supremacist policies. This represents a hallmark of the ‘white church’ historically. In many cases, there is an ungodly level of comfort with discriminatory practices. Differing Lens The Fires of Neoliberalism There are nuanced differences between black and white ap- The Thatcherite Roots proaches to Christianity in America. A person who has lived on the underside of the American democratic experience of the UK’s Social because of their race is likely to understand the Bible and God differently from those who have reaped its benefits. In the Housing Crisis same way that both the slave and the slave owner prayed to By Kenneth Surin a divine being but their understanding of God differed radi- cally from one another, black churches and white churches The massive fire which engulfed London’s Grenfell Tower have historically had very different understandings of what it causing several dozen fatalities (the official death toll has not means to be a Christian. Black churches have historically been yet been released) opened the eyes of countless Brits. on the cutting edge of social justice movements as it relates Somewhat accustomed to hearing or reading about such to race and economic inequality. It is this black interpretive conflagrations in (say) Lagos or Dubai, but not London or lens that explains why people like Nat Turner, Bishop Henry Doncaster, some Brits saw the fire and its aftermath as an op- McNeal Turner, Richard Allen, and Dr. Martin Luther King, portunity to shine a broad-beamed spotlight on the hitherto Jr. felt so strongly about social injustice. Their understand- overlooked UK housing crisis. ing of God was of one who is not interested in merely having This crisis has been decades in the making, as have the people of different ethnicities be nice to one another—black conditions which led to the immolation of Grenfell Tower. At folks see God as a person who is interested in liberation. the time of writing, The Independent reports that “at least 181 That is why that pastor angered me so. He was asking those high-rise buildings in 51 different local authorities have now who have access to whiteness and the privilege it brings to failed fire safety tests”. Buildings at three hospitals have also merely tolerate black people. That does not bring justice; it been found to have combustible cladding. does not bring liberation. To liberate those who are marginal- As with so many of the U.K.’s current problems—the ized because of racism is to commit to a fundamental change housing crisis, growing socio-economic inequality, a broken to the structure of this country. Those who are racially pro- welfare system, a crippled and underfunded health service, filed and sentenced under mandatory minimums because of an education system on its knees, a lightly regulated and the war on drugs are in need of liberation. Black and brown largely out of control banking and financial sector, massive folks who are disproportionately in poverty relative to white cuts to the public sector including the emergency services, folks are in need of liberation. Black children who dispro- deregulation of building-inspection protocols, the creation portionately attend decrepit and underfunded schools are of a “business-friendly” climate and all that this entails, a in need of liberation. Black women raised in a culture that ramshackle railway system, over-priced utilities, the virtual sees them as unattractive because their skin is dark and their destruction of the legal-aid programme, the hollowing-out of hair is coarse are in need of liberation. Even older Black men local government, and so on—we must look to this or that who constantly wear wind-suits with dress shoes and leather policy introduced by Margaret Thatcher for its (and their) baseball hats are in need of liberation—and saying racism is origin.

25 Some of what Thatcher did was symbolic—she made a these were magnified by an austerity policy and welfare cuts point of never using the National Health Service (being able which continue to this day. to afford private health insurance after marrying the multi- Over two million properties were sold-off by local councils millionaire businessman Denis Thatcher) or public trans- because of Thatcher’s policy. port— but the rest was the outcome of cold and deliberate Housing experts, city planners, some economists, and calculation. social policy analysts, warned of a future housing disaster Even Blair and Brown’s New Labour shared the from the beginning. Conservative party’s relish for slashing regulations. In 2005 Most of the properties sold under Thatcher’s “right to buy” New Labour passed the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) policy would not remain in the hands of their original pur- Order which ended a requirement for government inspectors chasers. In those boom years for the housing market, prop- to certify that buildings had met fire codes, replacing such erty ownership invariably translated into rising equity, which inspections with a policy of self-policing. enabled many owners to “trade up” in the housing market. Given the age-old and worldwide catastrophic record of Moreover, in time, an owner’s old age, illness and death would this thing called “self-policing”, one must howl with sadness also place properties on the market. or laughter, or both. Once on the market, these properties were snapped up by Why not let motorists “self-police” the speeds at which they commercial landlords eager to enlarge their property portfo- drive? Or let restaurants “self-police” their safety standards? lios, who of course had the financial resources to outbid those The Tory government of the previous prime minister in need of housing, but who lacked the capital to compete on “Dodgy Dave” Cameron decreed that at least one regulation an equal footing with wealthy commercial landlords. had to be removed for each new one adopted, and officials in Almost inevitably, a housing crisis ensued, accompanied by charge of fire safety quickly toed Dodgy Dave’s line. To quote burgeoning economic inequality. The New York Times in its illustration of this policy shift: The U.K. economy has grown since 2010, but, according “If you think more fire protection would be good for U.K. to the Guardian, 7.4 million Brits, among them 2.6 million business, then you children, live in poverty despite being from working families should be making the case to the business community, not (constituting 55% of these deemed poor)—an increase of 1.1 the government,” Brian million since 2010–2011 (i.e. the first year of austerity). Martin, the top civil servant in charge of drafting building- The same Guardian article discusses a report produced safety guidelines, told an by the highly regarded and independent Joseph Rowntree industry conference in 2011, quoting the fire minister then, Foundation (JRF), which shows that the number living below Bob Neill. (“Should we the Minimum Income Standard—the earnings, defined by be looking to regulate further? ‘No’ would be my answer,’” the public, required for a decent standard of living—rose Mr. Neill added.) from 15 million to 19 million between 2008/9 and 2014/5. The Even after the Grenfell fire, the government’s Cabinet Office U.K.’s population is 65 million. website continues to reflect this hostility towards meaningful These 19 million people, or just under 1/3rd of the U.K.’s regulation: “Businesses with good records have had fire safety population, are its “just about managing” families (JAMs). inspections reduced from 6 hours to 45 minutes, allowing And here’s the rub—an important contributory factor in managers to quickly get back to their day job”. creating this appalling and inexcusable situation for JAMs The crux here of course is that with inspections cut to a and the destitute who are even worse-off, the JRF said, was mere 45 minutes, we can be damn certain that in a very short the increased number of people living in basically unafford- time just about any business could prove itself to have a able private rental properties, with the number of people in “good” safety record! poverty in private rentals doubling in a decade to 4.5 million. The U.K.’s housing crisis began with Thatcher’s decision to “Failures in the housing market are a significant driver of sell-off social housing. In August 1980, her first government poverty”, the JRF study said. “This is primarily, but not en- produced a Housing Act whose aim was “to give ... the right tirely, due to costs”. The number of rental evictions has risen to buy their homes ... to tenants of local authorities”. by 60% over 5 years to 37,000 annually. Social housing was sold off at deeply discounted prices, Many of the poor living in private rentals would not be in while tenants who continued to rent faced steep rent in- this situation if adequate social housing existed—they are creases and a deliberate loosening of security of tenure, all poor because they must pay rip-off rents to commercial land- intended to give existing tenants a big incentive to purchase lords if they want a roof over their heads. their rental properties. While the U.K.’s poor are being shovelled into a bottomless Thatcher’s decision led to the U.K.’s current housing crisis pit, a massive upwards transfer of wealth from lower-tiered and helped lay the ground for the 2008 financial crisis. It fed income earners to the top has been occurring. According to the U.K.’s growing economic inequality, worsened housing the Social Market Foundation, in the U.K.: market affordability, and caused housing supply deficits. All “… the average wealth of the best-off one-fifth of families

26 Trump and the evangelical leaders. Photo: White House. rose by 64 per cent between 2005 and 2012–13. Thatcher was warned beforehand of the consequences of this “However, the SMF found the poorest 20 per cent are deregulation: “Sir Robert Armstrong, the Cabinet secretary, less financially secure than they were in 2005, with their net expressed fears of “unscrupulous” money-making and “a wealth falling by 57 percent and levels of debt and use of over- bubble that will be pricked in a year or two”. drafts increasing. Homeowners have raced ahead of people in The sage Sir Robert was proved correct by what followed. rented accommodation... “ Private landlords, and foreign speculators, with ample The Equality Trust, citing 2014 data from the Office for holdings of cash, bid-up real estate prices. Rising property National Statistics, said the majority of the U.K. population “values”, and the foolhardy expectation that this rise would (66%) hold no positive financial assets at all, while the re- continue “forever”, coupled with a decade-long central maining 34% hold £9trillion in such assets. bank policy of artificially low interest rates and easy credit, According to the Guardian, U.K. household income is now added oil to the fire. To quote from a 2008 article in The New falling at its fastest rate since 1976. Statesman: As was the case in the U.S., the 2008 financial crisis in “Fuelled by irresponsible bank lending, U.K. house prices the UK was preceded by the bursting of a housing-market nearly tripled in the decade to 2007—a more lunatic rise even bubble. Thatcher’s flooding of the U.K. housing market with than in America. British prices have been running at nearly sold-off social housing was accompanied a few years later by eight times average earnings against a historic average of her overnight “Big Bang” deregulation of London’s financial 3.5. This was never going to be sustainable. But right at the sector in 1986. moment the bubble burst, in August 2007, a combination of As was the case in the U.S., deregulation involved abolish- related events conspired to turn this boom into an epic bust ing the firewall between high-street commercial banking and that is likely to consume the British economy and lead to a investment (i.e. speculative) banking, as well as the introduc- depression. You may think the credit crisis is over, but the real tion of electronic trading. crisis is just beginning.” Files released by the U.K.’s National Archive show that The New Statesman continues:

27 “Believing that house prices would rise for ever, and that cunning and elusive enemy whose tactics were hit and run, even if they faltered the Bank of England would cut interest not stand and fight. rates to reinflate the bubble, the banks began to lose any sense When an atypical fixed battle developed, it was typically of financial risk, and started to relax credit standards and lend well-removed from the population centers that hugged the irresponsibly. Private-equity firms were allowed to borrow coastline off the South China Sea. Vietnam was, after all, a huge multiples of their real assets. Banks started to hide their guerrilla war, or more broadly understood, a people’s war lending in off-balance-sheet devices such as structured in- fought to reunite a nation, artificially divided into North and vestment vehicles. South by fiat of the United States in the service of geopolitical “As house prices fall, this all turns into reverse. Loans brinksmanship. Accused of fermenting the southern insur- de-leverage, derivatives degrade, margin calls are missed. gency, North Vietnam was mercilessly bombed, but spared The total value of British residential property is about £3trn. the carnage of a ground war. Not so the south where, by Nearly £1trn of this will now disappear over the next few whatever foul means, the idea was “to isolate the population years if prices fall by 30 per cent.” from the Viet Cong,” notwithstanding that, as Mark Bowden Thatcher and her followers were determined to fight a class readily concedes, “in most instances they were one in the war, albeit under such disingenuous slogans as “putting the same.” The resistance was popular and widespread, and its ‘great’ back in Great Britain”. Her party continues this war to idea was to drive the American invader out, and overthrow this day. a despised ruling clique of Vietnamese compradors which In 2017, one in three Tory MPs are private landlords. survived only because the invader had committed hundreds 72 Tory MPs, including Theresa May’s new Minister for of thousands of its own troops and billions of its taxpayers’ Policing and Fire Services Nick Hurd (himself a landlord), dollars to sustain it. voted against recent legislation requiring that rental proper- Americans were consistently assured that bit by bit the tu- ties be “fit for human habitation”. multuous countryside was being pacified, and the guerillas The U.K.’s housing market is one colossal racket, providing attrited, both politically and as a fighting force. In late 1967 an enormous trough at which bankers, commercial landlords Americans were told they were winning the war. When Tet such as Nick Hurd, and Tory politicians such as the self-same —the Luna New Year—dawned on January 31, 1968, that il- Nick Hurd, gorge themselves while the inadequately housed lusion was irreparably shattered. The vastly superior forces and homeless look on. of the United States and its southern catspaw, the Army of When it comes to the U.K.’s housing crisis, and the dread- the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), were caught virtually ful Grenfell Tower fire, there is a royal road leading from flat footed when thousands of regular troops of the People’s Margaret Thatcher (whose mansion in Dulwich was registered Army of North Vietnam seemingly materialized from thin offshore so she didn’t have to pay tax on it), via Tony Blair air, and in coordination with local units of the southern (himself a multimillionaire landlord) and Gordon Brown, to resistance, launched up and down the length and breath of Theresa May and her shameless sidekick Nick Hurd. South Vietnam what was quickly branded the Tet Offensive. Why, oh why, do so many Brits continue to vote for these The most stunning blow for Americans, war managers and self-serving bastards? cp citizens alike, was an assault on the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon taken right to the walls of the American Embassy. Kenneth Surin teaches at Duke University, North Carolina. He For several weeks thereafter, media attention in the U.S. lives in Blacksburg, Virginia. and throughout the world focused primarily on the shock of Saigon’s vulnerability, overplaying its significance. A thou- sand kilometers north, at first scarcely noticed, even by the The Bloodbath in Vietnam Was Us Commander of U.S. forces, General William Westmoreland, a battle had commenced that would become the “longest and Hue Back When bloodiest” of the war, not waged over the—till then—familiar rural topography, but house to house, street by street, culmi- By Michael Uhl nating in one of the most intense chapters of urban warfare For Mark Bowden, author of Hue 1968, the pivotal battle of in the annals of American military history. Observers today the War in Vietnam did not follow the script most Americans might liken it to a more recent urban free-for-all entangling were used to scanning in their newspapers or visualizing on American troops in Fallujah, Iraq. Or, better yet, recall a U.S. the evening news. The war Americans followed at home was military fiasco in downtown Mogadishu that Mark Bowden like a humongous hunting expedition. U.S. forces seemed had crafted into an earlier best seller. To the extent compari- engaged in an endless chase over a lush boondocks inhab- sons hold, the Battle of Hue was like Black Hawk Down on ited by peasants and dotted with rice paddies or trailing steroids. the rugged forested highlands in search of the Viet Cong, a Hue 1968 is a comprehensive account of that battle written

28 in the page-turning style of popular narrative non-fiction. Certainly in Hue there were many Catholics who, in The author has assembled a cast of eyewitnesses who par- general, were partisans of the Saigon regime, not to mention ticipated in the action, Vietnamese and Americans, and the a contingent of elite ARVN soldiers stationed there, who battle unfolds in recollections mined from their interviews, would have sounded the alarm if they’d been aware of any and, for the departed, from other primary sources at his dis- imminent threat. On another side was a strong current of posal, such as lengthy wartime correspondences. Bowden has anti-Americanism among the Buddhists and the student properly set the strategic stage for his action in the context of body at Vietnam’s prestigious Hue University, who two the war’s two most relevant contemporaneous developments. years earlier had combined and rioted against the repressive There was the very fact of Tet, simultaneous attacks with South Vietnamese government, and burned the library of the varying degrees of effectiveness on virtually every population United States Information Service. But by early 1968, Hue was center and military base in the South. The Year of the Monkey being little frequented by the war’s violence, and hopes were came in like Armageddon, catching General Westmoreland, stoked that the city’s rich stock of architectural treasures, not for one, completely off guard even though he later claimed he least the palace of Vietnam’s last royal dynasty, might avoid knew those crafty commies were planning something. destruction. Compared with the rest of the country, life in To draw attention away from their true intentions, the Hue was reasonably good, and reasonably safe. A degree of North Vietnamese had executed a feint, keeping a remote political complacency had set into what remained a func- Marine encampment under heavy bombardment at Khe Sanh tional commercial entrepot where trade and traffic on Hue’s near the border with Laos, and just below the Demilitarized iconic Perfume River remained brisk. Zone (DMZ). Taking the bait, and just two weeks before Tet, Even though a majority of Hue’s population of 140,000 Westmoreland weakened his coastal enclaves by detaching could not be considered pillars of the revolution, an under- troops to reinforce the beleaguered camp. The American ground resistance network was well-entrenched in the city general believed he was luring the North Vietnamese into a and highly motivated. And Bowden, having tracked down a repeat of the battle of Dien Bien Phu, which in 1954 brought small cast of survivors, gives us affecting sketches of, among French colonial control of Vietnam to an end but inadver- others, the Village Girl who guided the troops through the tently opened the door to an American invasion. This time, darkness and pointed them toward their targets; the VC com- Westmoreland fantasized, “he was determined to prevent mander who stood up to the hero of Dien Bien Phu, General history from repeating itself.” That battle never developed, Vo Nguyen Giap, and revised the battle plan; the college boy and several months later, Khe Sanh was abandoned by the who worked with his fisherman landlord to smuggle arms Americans. into the city by sampan; the Buddhist poet turned what we Westmoreland’s obsession with Khe Sanh apparently pre- would call ‘information officer,’ and Bowden—who holds vented him from fully grasping that Hue, South Vietnam’s many conventional opinions—calls “propagandist;” but third largest city, and former Imperial capital, had fallen to my favorite was the balsy little guy who was given the task the Liberation Front in less than twenty-four hours. This to create a giant new flag for the victors to raise once they’d pattern of disbelief was moreover pervasive up and down the taken the city. American chain of command. At Phu Bai, a Marine base less The flag detail merits a special nod to illustrate the contrast than fifteen miles south of Hue, the commanding general, between the high tech m.o. of the Empire’s war machine, and with improbable symmetry named Forster LaHue, repeat- the endless improvisation of those in the Front who used edly ignored reports on the size of the force his counterat- gumption, imagination and stealth to their advantage in the tack would face, and insisted that, instead of thousands, their face of overwhelming fire power from air, land and sea. The number couldn’t possibly exceed more than a few hundred. task to create a flag to be seen, not as “an invasion or occupa- Could a force as large as the one being reported enter and tion, but rather as a liberation,” fell to Sargent Cao Van Sen, occupy the entire city that quickly and virtually undetected? an old war horse who’d fought with the Viet Minh against Through some of his most original reporting Bowden recon- the French, joined the northern Army, and was then ordered structs exactly how that occurred. back to his native Hue to organize among the Viet Cong. The Shifting the action in his account from one adversary to the idea of the flag, Bowden says “was to recognize real politi- other, Bowden begins with the attack, describing how four cal differences between North and South,” with a design that regiments totaling roughly four thousand uniformed NVA represented, not only the liberation forces, but also “the in- soldiers managed to infiltrate the border between North and telligentsia and the city’s religious factions—Buddhists and South Vietnam, rendezvous with local guerrillas in a force of Catholics.” Hanoi’s political objective at that stage was tran- equal size, and ultimately bivouac on the outskirts of Hue. sitional, “to establish a neutral, independent South Vietnam,” “It was the kind of troop movement,” comments Bowden, leaving reunification to future negotiations.” Sgt. Sen’s job was “that could remain secret only if the citizenry supported it, or to line up the material, a sewing machine and a seamstress to didn’t care enough to sound the alarm.” produce a single flag, which, when completed, required two

29 men to carry it. After being “run up the 123-foot flagpole… to unleash a “popular uprising,” it was General Kinh’s opinion, that stood just outside the royal palace before the Citadel’s according to Bowden, that no such uprising would occur, not southern wall… it was visible all over Hue” when the city’s even in subdued and occupied Hue, given the certainty of an denizens awoke January 31st on the first morning of Tet. overpowering American counter-attack. Kinh knew his forces Metropolitan Hue spread over both sides of the Perfume “could take the city, but… not hold it for long. Achievable River, and the Front’s objective was to occupy the zone on goals… were to destroy the ARVN division, and… round the south bank called the Triangle, and, on the north, the up… those who represented the Saigon regime… who were Citadel, an “enormous fortress that enclosed nearly two marked for arrest and punishment.” square miles… its walls twenty-six feet high and impenetra- The subsequent executions of many of these Saigon of- bly thick,” and enclosing the neighborhoods of Hue’s most af- ficials is thematic in Bowden’s text, an overly eager retailing fluent residents. Primary targets, included the air strip inside of the ex post facto justification among the war’s apologists the Citadel, the province headquarters, the treasury, the post for the American decision to rescue their allies by destroying office, the prison, the radio station and “the sole American their city. More informed observers might counter that for an

Battle of Hue. Photo: DoD/National Archives. base, the [Military Assistance Command, Vietnam] MACV American writer of Bowden’s stature to lay charges of mass compound.” murder at the Vietnamese resistance—in this instance taking The Commander of the Front, General Dang Kinh blood retaliation on enemies considered legitimate military watched from high ground to the west, anxiously awaiting targets—demonstrates a highly hometown cast of mind, and the assault to begin. Finally, “throughout the city arose the a failure to do the math on the infinitely less selective assassi- sound of gunfire… scattered at first, and then as if touched nation orgy of the U.S. Phoenix Program, not to mention the off by a fuse, it rose rapidly to a din.” By the time the shooting war’s vastly unbalanced human death toll perpetrated upon stopped, the attacking force, having “suffered only a few ca- the Vietnamese population by the invader. sualties, had dealt Hue’s defenders a crushing surprise blow.” Kinh’s prediction proved correct. And much of what The only major targets not overrun were a fortified redoubt Bowden encapsulates in Hue 1968 is devoted to a ground level occupied by the 1st ARVN Division inside the Citadel, and view on just how the city was retaken. Bowden fully examines the MACV compound on the opposite side of the river, both first January 31st, the day Hue fell, from a variety of vantage heavily under siege. points including civilians and combatants on both sides, Notwithstanding the loud cheerleading from Hanoi for Tet then moves the battle forward in week long blocks until the

30 Front, faced with annihilation, is forced to withdraw. Had the off-shore guns, and from American and ARVN air power and U.S. command acted more swiftly, the lives of many marines artillery intent on expelling the Front whatever the human might have been spared, but the city faced devastation in cost. As for “those executed,” it appears as if Bowden may every scenario as long as the occupiers remained. The initial have that figure “off” by a factor of ten. Writing in The New counter-thrust came from the nearby Marine base at Phu Bai York Times in October 1972, Richard Barnet, a former State when General LaHue, still doubting his adversary’s vast nu- Department official and co-founder of the Institute for Policy merical superiority, initially dispatched so few marines that, Studies, quotes what the Hue Police Chief told a correspon- on one of few occasions during the war, the U.S. was seriously dent of The Times of London in March 1968 just days after out-gunned. When a marine captain already in Hue called the battle. The Chief, “Doan Cong Lap estimated the total for air and artillery strikes to dislodge the entrenched enemy, number of executions at 200.“ Moreover, “the local Catholic General LaHue told him “rather strikingly that he was over- priest reported that none of his clergy or parishioners were reacting.“ LaHue “saw no reason on earth why the more than harmed by the N.L.F. [National Liberation Front],” who had four hundred men in the [MACV] compound, reinforced been given instructions to be on their best behavior. Even if with well over three hundred U.S. marines,” assorted tanks these two eyewitnesses under-counted the reprisal deaths, it’s and heavy weaponized vehicles, “should not be able to flatten still unlikely that Bowden’s figure holds water, given his reli- anything between them and the fucking Citadel.” Bowden ance on official U.S. sources. aptly titles this episode An Idiotic Mission. Richard Barnet took up this topic at a time when voices Three hundred men represented one understrength marine in the Nixon administration were claiming that mass execu- battalion, but only a single unit, Alpha Company of the 1st tions at Hue were proof there would be a bloodbath if the U.S. Battalion of the 1st Marine Division was dispatched at first withdrew and the communists came to power. When ques- to test the enemy strength. This proved a disaster, and the tioned on this in Hanoi, Premier Pham Van Dong retorted, best account of the action on the ground I’ve found was not “There is nothing in recent Vietnamese history to suggest Bowden’s, but in Vietnam-Perkasie, a memoir by W.D. (Bill) that a government bent on killing hundreds of thousands Ehrhart. When Alpha Company left Phu Bai just as the sun of people in South Vietnam can keep peace.” In any case the was coming up, Bill Ehrhart was given the option of staying bloodbath was us. As Barnet dryly quipped, “In the Orwellian behind. He was short, meaning only a few days remained on age, the daily saturation bombings of Indochina are defended what had already been a harrowing thirteen month tour. But as missions of mercy.” since the unit was just going to check things out, and were Mark Bowden seems to bend over backwards throughout told they’d be back by evening, Bill threw caution to the wind. this voluminous and valuable book to provide a two-sided Alpha Company, moving to relieve the assault on the perspective on a particularly tragic moment in the Vietnam MACV compound passed a gas station on the city outskirts, War. But there’s something distastefully familiar in his throw- and then, Ehrhart writes, “all hell broke loose... The shock away rhetoric of the Cold War bias that got us into Vietnam of the ambush caught the whole column completely by sur- in the first place. Bowden demonstrates how truth is betrayed prise… We knew the compound lay straight up the road… by the words he chooses, for example, that “antiwar activ- seven blocks ahead… We fought our way up the [first] block. ists in the States romanticized Ho Chi Minh, and his cause, And the one after that. All day long we inched up the street. emphasizing his nationalist character… [but] Hanoi was Casualties were appalling. Wounded and dead Marines lay Communist, authoritarian to the core… ruthless and doctri- everywhere.” Ehrhart, wounded in action, was in the thick of naire.” Yet even this phobic reflex to honor the thought police it the whole time. His memoir is a compelling, heart wrench- in the mainstream where he prospers doesn’t cause Bowden ing read. to ignore that it was the Stalinists who hoped to come to From there Bowden covers the fighting chapter and verse. power though the ballot box and the Americans who made And if battle action is your genre, it’s a read that’s hair raising war to prevent that. enough to fix your attention. The killing went on for 26 By consensus in the school of conventional wisdom the days, and by the end, 80% of the city lay in rubble. Bowden Tet Offensive of 1968 was the turning point of the Vietnam devotes a last chapter to Hue’s human toll. “Two-hundred and War, after which the American war aim was not to win, but fifty American marines and soldiers were killed, and 1,554 how to get out. Mark Bowden makes an excellent case that wounded ... The Front’s losses are estimated at between 2,400 the fulcrum of that turning point was the Battle of Hue. But and 5000 ... A conservative guess at those executed would what if there was no turning point? In Vietnam the protracted be two thousand… [which] brings us to a combined civilian war to expel a powerful foreign invader had its roots in mil- death toll of about eight thousand ... not an exact figure, but lennia past; the American invasion was just another bump in to the degree it’s off, it’s off by being too low.” the road. cp That the civilian death toll was enormous, cannot be doubted, and is by most accounts I’ve read over the years Michael Uhl is the author of Vietnam Awakening. attributed to the terrible pounding the city took from naval

31 culture & reviews

Warren Buffet: $25 billion or incarcerated prisoners), take from Give And Take Nike’s Phil Knight: $17 billion the public treasury (tax breaks and sub- By Lee Ballinger sidies), or take from the earth. Texan These people, whom Kenneth George P. Mitchell, dubbed “the father “One of the most surprising facts of Saltman, author of The Gift of of fracking,” became a billionaire from charity in America is that the people Education, terms “venture philanthro- that parentage. He gave away hundreds who can least afford to give are the pists,” prattle on endlessly about how of millions of dollars during his life ones who donate the greatest percent- they want to help the world, about their and, when he died in 2013, he left over age of their income,” wrote Ken Stern own selflessness. But their selves are $800 million to a foundation he named in The Atlantic. “In 2011, the wealthi- doing just fine. for himself. est Americans—those with earnings Billionaire and former New York City Why do the VPs (Venture Philanth- in the top 20 percent—contributed on mayor Michael Bloomberg has given ropists) give so much money away? average 1.3 percent of their income to away hundreds of millions of dollars, First of all, to keep more of it. “Google charity. By comparison, Americans at yet he still owns a private jet and some and Facebook—companies that were the base of the income pyramid—those thirteen properties around the world— founded by active philanthropists and in the bottom 20 percent—donated 3.2 estates in London, Bermuda, the that also engage in extensive corpo- percent of their income.” Hamptons, and Westchester County. rate charity—have both engaged in This may speak to the milk of human Bloomberg spent $103 million of his elaborate tax avoidance schemes using kindness flowing through the veins own money on his final race for office, offshore subsidiaries,” writes Callahan. of those who don’t have much else to or about $183 per vote. “Apple, which has lately been celebrated share, but it definitely doesn’t mean Pete Peterson, a billionaire banker for its big turn toward philanthropy America’s ultra-wealthy aren’t interest- who, in his role as philanthropist, gen- under CEO Tim Cook, is an even worse ed in charity, even if it’s only for reasons erously funds attacks on Social Security offender, pioneering new forms of tax that are hardly charitable. and Medicare, lives in a $38 million avoidance that have allowed it to stash “From 2003 to 2013, itemized chari- “apartment” in Manhattan. billions in profits in foreign tax havens.” table donations from people making Bill Gates has promised to give away ProPublica’s Jesse Eisenberg, $500,000 or more increased by 57 per most of his $80 billion fortune. The writing in the New York Times, blasted cent,” David Callahan writes in The Gates Foundation is the largest grant Zuckerberg and Chan’s creation of Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy giver in the world and employs 1,400 an LLC as an umbrella for their foun- in a New Gilded Age, “while itemized people. Yet Gates has a little something dation, which allows them to avoid contributions from people making $10 left over. He lives in a 66,000 square taxes as well as oversight since LLCs million or more increased 104 per cent. foot house worth over $100 million. don’t have to disclose their activities. One study has predicted that nearly $27 In 2015, Mark Zuckerberg and his According to Kenneth Saltman, for trillion will be donated to charity by wife Priscilla Chan pledged to use 99 every ten dollars given by the Gates American estates from now until 2061.” per cent of their Facebook shares to Foundation, four dollars is lost from There has been a great increase in make the world a better place. The the public wealth in taxes. riches at the pinnacle of the American shares were worth $45 billion, yet Z&C Many VPs make big donations to pyramid. The wealth of the Forbes 400 will never have to want for anything— right wing foundations (and get a tax has grown by 2,000 per cent since 1984. they will always have a ten (or is it deduction for doing so). Ditto for JP Nestled among the 400 are many of eleven?) figure financial cushion to fall Morgan’s $10 million gift to the New America’s most active philanthropists. back on. York Police Department. Between 2005 and 2015, just the in- While all billionaires are presumed, But tax avoidance reflects only the crease in their fortunes has been phe- at least by the mass media, to be hard- financial shenanigans of fat cats and nomenal. For instance: working Horatio Algers who’ve pulled corporations individually. The main themselves up by their bootstraps, the action in the philanthropy game comes Koch brothers: $76 billion reality is that to give, the philanthropist from the top tier as a whole acting in its Walton (Walmart) family: $70 billion must first take. Take from employees class interest. (some of whom are sweatshop workers As the New York Times recently

32 noted, science has become “a private his experience at Enron—destruction The most popular recipient of philan- enterprise.” And that private enter- of $2 billion in employee retirement thropy money for schools is education prise is increasingly determined by savings—might have made young John “reform,” a nice way of describing the what philanthropists will fund. UC sympathetic to retirees. Nope. Arnold privatization of public schools. Fueled Berkeley’s Energy Biosciences Institute started a foundation, named it after by an ocean of cash from philanthro- is the unholy spawn of a $500 million himself, and pursued pension “reform” pists, a nationwide push has resulted in deal with British Petroleum. In return (cutting pensions) with a vengeance. the establishment of the Common Core for its money, BP gets to decide which “David Sirota, a writer for the tech curriculum with its mania for rigid research projects get funded. At MIT, website PandoDaily revealed that testing, not to mention an epidemic of the university’s Energy Initiative is PBS and its New York affiliate had ac- charter schools. The results of educa- almost entirely funded by fossil fuel cepted $3.5 million from the Arnold tion becoming just another investment companies. MIT has also taken $185 Foundation to help produce ‘The opportunity have been predictable, at million from oil billionaire and climate Pension Peril,’ a series that echoed times almost comical. There are now denial fanatic David Koch, who is a Life Arnold’s dire pension prognostica- ads for Oreo cookies in math textbooks Member of the university’s board. tions,” Benjamin Soskis wrote in The at the same time that Microsoft at- Philanthropists often decide who Atlantic”… A few weeks later, Sirota torney Joel Klein became the head of lives and who dies. David Callahan con- brought to light a $500,000 grant New York City Schools, which then co- trasts New York Presbyterian Hospital, that the foundation had made to the incidentally got a large grant from the with its dizzying array of specialized Brookings Institution that helped Gates Foundation. care centers funded by billionaires, to support a report that laid out pos- The adoption of Common Core the situation “a few miles north in the sible political strategies toward cutting unified what had been a fractured fifty Bronx, where men have the lowest life pension benefits. Sirota also highlight- state mess into a single national market expectancy of nearly anywhere in New ed a $4.85 million grant the foundation for education, providing a standard to York State—often dying from causes made to the Pew Charitable Trusts evaluate students at every school in the that could have been prevented if only that underwrote a report on the public country. This market was estimated to they had access to basic health care.” pension system focusing on the need to be worth $18 billion a year at its incep- Callahan summarizes: “Helping out the reduce retiree benefits.” tion. Microsoft and other corporations hospitals and health clinics in the city’s Universities, once regarded as immediately jumped in to grab the poor neighborhoods has never been of citadels of reason, bastions of critical cash. much interest to wealthy donors.” thinking, are becoming little more than Among the top funders of education Venture capitalist Tom Perkins pawns on the chessboard of the one reform efforts are Bill Gates, the Walton has given away millions of dollars to per cent. In the past six years, with the family, and Eli Broad. Broad, the only medical institutions, universities, and state of Michigan under the control of person to have created two Fortune the San Francisco Ballet. Perkins also governor Rick Snyder, the man who 500 companies, was once America’s likes to point out that he has been poisoned the water in Flint, the budget biggest homebuilder. L.A., where Broad knighted in Norway for his “remark- for Wayne State in Detroit has been lives, is ground zero in the nationwide able” humanitarian feats. What’s more slashed by $75 million. The school battle over education reform. The Los remarkable is that Tom Perkins has then accepted a $40 million donation Angeles Times’ education coverage is compared the media’s focus on income from Mike Illitch, owner of the Little funded in part by grants from a number inequality to the Nazis’ perpetration Caesar’s pizza empire and of the local of foundations, including the Broad of Kristallnacht.While this loathsome pro hockey and baseball teams. There Foundation. characterization may be offensive to were strings attached. Illitch and his The ultra-wealthy are no longer Perkins’ fellow VPs, none of them dis- wife Miriam were formally given input content with simply buying influence. agree that income inequality must be on curriculum and on “aspects of the They want direct control. According to maintained. educational experience.” Forty million marketwatch.com, just 62 people own John Arnold was a trader in deriva- dollars wasn’t much to Illitch, not when as much wealth as half the world’s pop- tives at Enron who was so good at his you consider that he had already re- ulation. Those 62 people are not about job that he received an $8 million ceived hundreds of millions of dollars to let the impoverished masses have any bonus from the company in 2001, the in subsidies from Detroit taxpayers for say over what happens in society. Our year Enron collapsed. Arnold dodged his businesses. Billionaire Charles Koch democracy has always been stunted, that bullet, started an energy hedge made a large donation to Florida State partial, and corrupt. Now we live as fund, and became America’s youngest on the condition that he could decide best we can under the autocratic rule billionaire in 2007. You might think who was hired and fired by the school’s of a democracy for billionaires and bil- that his personal lifetime security and economics department. lionaires only.

33 Is this an exaggeration? Consider “charitable-industrial complex” but I walked out of the theatre feeling like that from the mid 1960s until 1981, created it in the first place. Those in a I’d just taken an intimate photochemi- Congress appropriated an average of position to benefit from turning the cal bath with the lush, 70mm print and $626 million per year for the Land and world into “one big market” are not emerged a new man. Light years from Water Conservation Fund, which was about to “shatter current structures and the Dark Knight Trilogy, Dunkirk is charged with financing the creation of systems.” lean, yet fierce, no doubt a mirror of parks throughout the country. Between Even the most worthy exceptions to Nolan’s headspace after years of build- 1982 and 2007, that average fell to $62 philanthropic sleight of hand prove the ing up good credit with Warner Bros., million per year. In 2015, Congress point. Rap mogul Dr. Dre recently gave the studio he’s worked exclusively with moved to eliminate the program alto- $10 million to help fund a new per- since Insomnia. He’s finally taken the gether, under pressure from the likes of forming arts complex in his hometown baby gloves off and gotten back to the the Heritage Foundation, which receives of Compton. That’s all well and good, formal fun of Memento, set within the $100 million annually from so-called but what about all the cities which need constructs of a wartime epic. However philanthropists, who in turn receive a performing arts complexes and don’t flawed Nolan’s larger work has been, tax deduction. have connections to a billionaire like what’s important, like the soldiers Meanwhile, media mogul Barry Dr. Dre? trapped on the Dunkirk beach, is that Diller and his wife, fashion designer Philanthropy is not the answer. The he survived with enough courage and Diane von Furstenberg, have been answer is a society where charity is spirit to deliver a powerful reaction to working to build a “public” park on Pier unnecessary because everyone’s needs today’s middling blockbusters. 54 in lower Manhattan (the pier where are met by a “structure and system” of The film opens mid-action, the young Titanic survivors landed in New York). universal prosperity, one guaranteed by soldiers rising from what can only be Dubbed “Diller’s Island,” the park will law, custom, and daily fact. cp assumed was a German air strike. They be controlled by Diller himself. He and wander the empty streets of Dunkirk, Where everybody’s affording the his wife will kick in the majority of the looking for water in old hoses and a necessities money in return for a tax deduction secluded place for a bowel movement. but the project, located in an area that Nobody’s hungry, thirsty, or roofless One starts to realize how young these includes multimillion dollar condos Where the old and toothless got boys are in their oversized army uni- and fancy office buildings (including dental benefits forms when the bullets start picking von Furstenberg’s business digs) and Benefit concerts not necessary because them off. A young private, Tommy, already has two major parks, will also we’re all rich (Fion Whitehead) makes it past the require $40 million in public money English barricade and onto an overcast Even regular folk can survive off of for completion. “In New York’s poorer beach with a long pier. This is… being broke neighborhoods,” David Callahan writes, The Mole: A land of British and “hundreds of parks have fallen into dis- Soak up soap operas and novellas French servicemen trapped and easy repair and badly need upgrades.” Cause that’s the only drama prey to any Germany fighter plane. Warren Buffet’s son Peter questioned Not ideal for an hour, a day let alone an —Cory Cofer aka Besskepp capitalism itself in a 2013 New York entire week. Times op-ed piece. Buffett the Younger Lee Ballinger’s new book, Love and The Sea: Over the course of the final expressed outrage over how “lives and War: My First Thirty Years of Writing, is day of the siege, A civilian boat captain communities are destroyed by the available as a free download at love- heeds Churchill’s call and heads out system that creates vast amounts of andwarbook.com. You can listen to his across the English Channel to rescue the wealth for the few” and the fact that the podcasts at http://feeds.feedburner. soldiers, along with his son and a local “charitable-industrial complex” works com/LoveWarPodcast boy. to perpetuate such inequities. The real The Air: In the final hour of the siege goal of giving, says Peter Buffett, should rescue, three RAF pilots head their be to “shatter current structures and Spitfires to battle the Luftwaffe over systems that have turned much of the Dunkirk: Bodies. Dunkirk. world into one big market.” With these three different story But the people who are in a position Rest. Motion. strands, Nolan weaves a temporal tap- to give away enough money to move by Ed Leer estry that expands and contracts, giving the needle have that money precisely it the feel of a living organ, accelerating because of society’s “inequities.” They Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk is to its last breath. There is a similar trick are the people who not only finan- perhaps the filmmaker’s most pure iter- in Inception wherein time functions cially and politically benefit from the ation of all his cinematic vision thus far. differently depending how many levels

34 deep into the dream world one goes. concern itself with much dialogue or didn’t matter, as long as the hero cared The difference being he has done away character history. It is a film of physi- about it. This becomes obvious in such with any auspice of science fiction, cal process, like A Man Escaped or no-brainer action films like Taken instead using the conceit to show the Pickpocket, the simple act of opening a wherein Liam Neeson’s daughter is only subjectivity of time. Life moves slower door plays a crucial role in survival for as important as how many people we for those on land, a bit faster at sea, and hundreds of drowning soldiers. see him kill to get her back. She is the breakneck when up in a WWII fighter And survival is what Dunkirk is all helpless sheep and he is the sheepdog, a plane. about. It is a moment of military defeat, man of unseen aggression and violence While the effect is thrilling, what is but becomes transcendent in this loss. who acts in the service of good. In Dunkirk, Tommy is the center of the film, but he’s also the McGuffin, which the sea captain Mr. Dawson and BAF pilot Farrier race towards trying to save. On their way to Dunkirk, Mr. Dawson picks up a soldier stranded on the wreckage of a boat, shell-shocked and despondent. Later in the film, but earlier in the narrative, the same soldier is shown in a position of authority, barking orders at Tommy from a lifeboat. Not only does this orient the audience to the sequential order of events. This helps the audience photo: Ford Foundation understand the timeline of each story, but it also shows Nolan trying to say, that each dura- There is a line in film where a soldier how fluid power structures can be. The tion receives the same amount of real says, “All we did was survive.” To which strong become weak, and vice versa. estate? Is one hour in the life of a fighter an old blind man responds, “That’s In spite of this dynamic, or perhaps pilot worth as much as a week for the enough.” This, more than anything else because of it, Nolan presents his fellow soldiers below? This was probably not is where Dunkirk owes its greatest debt countrymen as one, unified front. the intention, but these questions arise to Bresson. The heroes of Mouchette Although the soldiers stranded on the in cinema, where time is such a valued and Au Hazard Balthazar are not active beach today are the ones who need commodity. This is especially true protagonists, but they do exist, suffer, rescuing, they will also be the ones who of larger-scale films, where the more and endure, all building up to a single, go back into battle tomorrow to defend active, in-motion the on-screen figure beatific moment of transcendence. It the Commonwealth. There’s a reason is, the more the audience is captivated. is rare to find a film of as massive as why the enemy has no human face in In this way, Dunkirk is subverting the Dunkirk with such empathy about how the film, as if the true antagonist aren’t Hollywood Blockbuster. hard it is to simply live. This is not to the Germans, but the fear, paranoia and Nolan has stated that he was say the ground forces merely sit around. desperation that festers in a world void heavily influenced by the work of both In fact, their struggle turns inward, as of hope and compassion. These are fa- Hitchcock and Bresson, two filmmak- one group becomes trapped in an even miliar ideas in Nolan’s oeuvre, but with ers whose work seems a bit incongru- smaller enclosed space, bringing out Dunkirk’s stripped down style, never ous at first glance. Hitchcock’s chubby paranoia and ugly mob mentality near before has such a slick, studio product fingerprint is all over Dunkirk, with the climax. felt so human and personal. cp each set piece generating a new round Going back to Hitchcock, who Ed Leer is a filmmaker living in of high-wire suspense. It is not imme- famously introduced the idea of the Los Angeles. diately apparent how Bresson’s brand McGuffin, the narrative mechanism of spiritual minimalism shows itself. that drives the action forward. For Like Bresson’s films, Dunkirk does not Hitchcock, whatever the McGuffin

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