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Obama’s Imperial Presidency

September 14, 2018

Obama’s Imperial Presidency

Photo Source The U.S. Army | CC BY 2.0

Could Donald Trump already be the worst of all American presidents?  In less than two years his record on the world scene has been frightening enough: U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Accords, scuttling of the Iran nuclear treaty, moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, unjustifiably punitive sanctions against Russia, Iran, and Venezuela, terror bombing of Mosul and other Iraq cities, bombastic threats against friends and enemies alike – not to mention a $54 billion gift to the Pentagon and stepped-up nuclear “modernization”.  Hard to imagine much worse.

One article of faith among liberals and the corporate media is that Trump’s presidency stands alone as a house or horrors, unprecedented in its fascistic authoritarianism, crazy pronouncements, and ideological blend of xenophobia, racism, sexism, and sheer extremism.   Those in the “resistance” know that pretty much any alternative (Bill Maher, LeBron James) would be far better, though specifics — beyond Trump’s mortal sin of partnering with Putin — are rarely mentioned.   But precisely what alternatives?   Bernie Sanders?   Well, the Democratic National Committee never gave him much chance.   Obvious comparisons are Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, and his competitor, Hillary Clinton.  Obama was in charge of U.S. foreign policy for the preceding eight years, so his legacy (with plenty of help from Clinton) might be worth considering.

Obama, it turns out, was among the most militaristic White House occupants in American history, taking the imperial presidency to new heights.  It has been said that Obama was the only president whose administration was enmeshed in multiple wars from beginning to end.   His imperial ventures spanned many countries – Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia along with proxy interventions in Yemen and Pakistan.

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American Mass Media and Punditry Remain a Dishonest, Militaristic Embarrassment

June 14, 2018

American Mass Media and Punditry Remain a Dishonest, Militaristic Embarrassment

When it comes to U.S. presidents, experience has taught me to always assume the worst. Irrespective of what the winning candidate said on the campaign trail, a few things things tend to happen once they’re sworn into office. To name a few, we almost always end up with a further expansion of the imperial presidency, more pointless wars, growth in the surveillance state and continued unaccountable pillaging by Wall Street. The worst trends and elements of society tend to grow no matter who sits in the oval office.

As such, I’m genuinely heartened by those rare occasions when a U.S. president tries to reduce geopolitical tensions and prioritize peace. This isn’t to say such attempts will work out perfectly, or work at all, but in a world in which a hammer-focused American foreign policy tends to see every situation as a nail, attempts at peace should at the very least be supported by those who claim to care about such things.

Nevertheless, here in America we’ve encouraged and rewarded a peculiar class of people who tend to cluster within specialized niches of the imperial economy, namely the mass media and think tanks often funded by military contractors and foreign dictatorships. While these types always cheer U.S. overseas belligerence, nothing gets them clutching their pearls more fiercely than Donald Trump doing something reasonable.

When it comes to U.S. presidents I’m nobody’s cheerleader, but if the executive tries to make the world more peaceful I’ll support it. If they do the opposite, I’ll oppose. As such, I’m on board with Trump trying to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula and I’m glad he’s doing it. Naturally, mass media pundits took the opposite approach and immediately resorted to their trademark creepy militarism and ignorance.

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Dictator for Life: The Rise of the American Imperial President [SHORT]

March 7, 2018

Dictator for Life: The Rise of the American Imperial President [SHORT]

I’m not a fan of Communist China.

It’s a vicious totalitarian regime that routinely employs censorship, surveillance, and brutal police state tactics to intimidate its populace, maintain its power, and expand the largesse of its corporate elite.

Just recently, in fact, China—an economic and political powerhouse that owns more of America’s debt than any other country and is buying up American businesses across the spectrum— announced its plan to make its president, Xi Jinping, president for life.

President Trump thinks that’s a great idea.

Trump thinks the idea of having a president for life is so great, in fact, that America might want to move in that direction. “Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday,” said Trump to a roomful of supporters.

Here’s the thing: we already have a president for life.

Sure, the names and faces and parties have changed over the years, but really, when you drill down under the personalities and political theater, you’ll find that the changing names and faces are merely cosmetic: no matter who sits on the throne, the office of the president of the United States has, for all intents and purposes, become a unilateral power unto itself.

Although the Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers, in recent years, American presidents (Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc.) have claimed the power to completely and almost unilaterally alter the landscape of this country for good or for ill.

The powers amassed by each successive president through the negligence of Congress and the courts—powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler—empower whomever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability.

The presidency itself has become an imperial one with permanent powers.

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I Don’t Want Your Leaders

January 10, 2018

I Don’t Want Your Leaders

In 2017, I wrote a lot about how dangerously centralized our political system in the U.S. has become, and how we need to decentralize governance in order to restore power, liberty and policy experimentation to the local level. This notion that a sprawling and culturally diverse nation of 325 million individuals should constantly battle to the death over the ring of political power in Washington D.C. so as to impose their view on the other half of the country which completely disagrees is patently ludicrous. States, and even metro areas themselves, should be making most of the important decisions that impact their citizens’ lives on a day to day basis.

This isn’t complicated. People who live in Boulder, Colorado such as myself have a very distinct worldview on most things from the average resident of let’s say Houston, Texas. This isn’t to say one is superior to the other, we’re just talking generally different mindsets and cultures. The residents of these distinct places should be able to express themselves via policy in a way that most fits the desires and values reflective of these particular regions. While this does happen to some degree, all U.S. citizens are still beholden to the whims of centralized political power in Washington D.C. to a very unhealthy and dysfunctional degree.

One of the worst side effects of centralized power in Washington D.C. is most Americans waste all their political energy speculating on, or rooting for, who will be elected the next supreme ruler (President) every four years. This is such a gigantic waste of time and energy, but one reason it happens is because the U.S. has an imperial Presidency these days. The executive simply acts in a manner that the founders had never intended, and the other branches of government (legislative and judiciary) permit it.

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Wait a Minute–Who’s Fascist?

March 16, 2016

Wait a Minute–Who’s Fascist?

The core belief of the Establishment is the central state should run everything.

If you’re an Establishment insider, the mainstream media will give you plenty of column inches and airtime to label Donald Trump a “dangerous” fascist: for example, Democratic insider Robert Reich’s fear-mongering frenzy Donald Trump is a 21st century American fascist, in which Reich conveniently overlooks constitutional limits on any president, “fascist” or not.

In effect, Reich is announcing the Constitution is dead and powerless to limit the President. Well, if that’s the problem, then why not attack the real problem, which is the Imperial Presidency? Why not? Reich served an Imperial President as a loyal lackey, that’s why–and he remains an energetic supporter of the central state and its bread-and-circuses institutionalized serfdom.

If you’re an Establishment insider, you’ll get ample opportunities in the corporate media to label Bernie Sanders a “dangerous” socialist. You don’t even have to be a member of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” (a staple of the Clintons’ attack strategy)–any insider can get airtime to label Sanders as “dangerous”–either because he’s socialist, or because he’s not radical enough. Any attack will do, and you’ll get plenty of opportunity to flesh out any attack, no matter how biased or nonsensical.

It is of course classic Orwellian Doublespeak to label any threat to one’s power “fascist,” and to laud one’s corrupt and venal allies as “freedom fighters,” but the Establishment’s panicked reliance on accusations of fascism is new and yes, dangerous. So let’s step back and ask–precisely who’s the fascist here?

It turns out that the definition of fascism widely attributed to Mussolini– “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power”–has no provenance: researchers cannot find this quote in any original source material.

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