Tag Archives: Donald Trump

Yemen Shows How Weak The US Congress Has Become | Congress 4 | Yemen 7

What few people recognize is how far the US Congress has fallen, and how quickly. US pop culture, almost from the beginning, has featured a high degree of skepticism about Congress. They’ve always been known as a bunch of corrupt, pompous windbags. That’s a healthy attitude to take towards one’s government. But I think this constant attitude of contempt has served to hide Congress’s fall.

With the one two punch of Newt Gingrich’s “reforms” in the 1990’s (discussed here) and the expansion of the government after 9/11, Congress has lost the plot almost entirely. It’s only by looking at the power and principle that Congress could stand on just a few short decades ago, that we can get the full picture. That’s what this week’s video comparing Congress’s abdication of responsibility for Yemen to their treatment of Nicaragua in the 1980’s is intended to do.

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Donald Trump Is Diocletian

Honestly, even I’m not so sure how I made it from John Kelly’s views of the US Civil War to Diocletian. But I did. It was nice to take a break from Saudi Arabia with a nice palate cleansing, and profoundly odd video. Comparing US history to Roman history is a profoundly silly thing to do. The systems are just too different. But sometimes the echos are so obvious I can’t help myself. I hope you enjoy this video as much as I enjoyed making it.

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Is Trump Ending US Power? | Iran & The Suez Crisis

Trump’s tremendous Iran screw up makes me think of the Suez Crisis. But then almost everything does. I may be a little obsessed with the Suez Crisis. There’s a certain poetry to it. Maybe because it’s one of those rare examples of the United States doing the right thing. But as this video explains, it is also a warning. The Suez Crisis is my choice for the end of the British Empire. It’s an example we should all be thinking of more as Donald Trump accelerates the end of the US Empire.

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Donald Trump’s Iran Deal Plan Makes Zero Sense

Donald Trump’s wrecking ball trick has been tried before. In fact it’s pretty much the only trick he has. But this time it’s different. Things like the Climate Change agreement are easy to re-visit. By the next administration folks can come back to it. The Iran Deal is different. He hasn’t managed to destroy it yet, but if he does, the damage he does to US-Iranian relations, and the reputation of the country will be permanent. The Opportunity of the JCPOA, the possibility of a broader peace between the US and Iran, has probably already been squandered. The chances of Iran becoming a North Korea style Nuclear hermit have also been increased.

This video focuses on the basics of why Trump’s actions are so insane. Later in the week we should get into the repercussions. But earlier today I saw the Iranian Foreign Minister making a very valid point that didn’t make it into either. If Trump succeeds in destroying this deal. Which he is likely to do from the US perspective anyway. How does any country ever trust the United States again?

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Donald Trump Is Killing White America #NFL

Maybe I’m being too optimistic, but I’ve come to see Donald Trump as a cultural phenomenon more than a political one. There’s still plenty of time for somebody to whip him into shape, but it seems like the nightmares of his retrograde political ambitions are unlikely to come to pass. The man is just too incompetent. What he is, is a symbol. Ta-Nehisi Coates recently dubbed Trump “The First White President”. In this video I argue that he’s also the last. Donald Trump is one last barbaric yawp of resentment from mid-century suburban Babbits on their way to the grave. He symbolizes the accelerated destruction of a dying era rather than a new one. I’m excited to see what’s next…

…as long as it’s not Nuclear war.

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4 Dead In Ohio, Our Selective Memory of the 1960s | Civil War II

I can’t recommend Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland: The Rise of A President and the Fracturing of America enough. Perlstein is a left wing fella, who has set himself the task of documenting the rise of the right in the United States. I have the suspicion that his books get less useful and balanced as he gets closer to the modern day, but the balance in this book between historical detail and rage is perfect. It’s an almost day to day account of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The book was a revelation for me, and set off a long path of reappraisal and research that led in a roundabout way to this video.

We have a certain idea of the 1960s in the US that I refer to in the video. It’s all Woodstock and civil rights and triumphing over Vietnam. What Nixonland helped me to understand was what a godawful shit-show it all was. I hope to get some of that across in this video, and in the process make you feel a bit better about where we are today in the United States.

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Is The United States Heading For Civil War!?!? | Civil War I

No, The United States is not headed for a new civil war. But the idea keeps popping up. I’d argue that it is a topic of discussion because of the bias towards the present that most of our pundits have. If you don’t know much about history, everything can seem unprecedented, and it can feel like everything is falling apart in a new and awful way. But all of this really has happened before, and back then it was so much worse. With today’s video, the first of two parts, I lay this all out.

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I Am A Racist | Charlottesville

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This one has been percolating for quite a while. I think the way we discuss Race, and “Racists” in the United States has some real problems. These issues were thrown into high relief by the events in Charlottesville this month. The Tiki-Torch White Supremacists are of course awful, but they are also a distraction. We LOVE to pick out examples of evil, and point to racists as something evil and different. Everybody can get on board the vilification train. The Alt-Right protesters are very deserving of our contempt, but that’s not always the case with our scapegoats. We get hung up on the evil of individuals, and we ignore our own faults and failings. This is a shame, because it’s the racism we all participate in that is the real problem.

I am very pleased with this one. It manages to throw together George Orwell, Steven Pinker, Jack Kirby and just a sprinkling of Jesus Christ. Good stuff as far as I’m concerned. More than anything else, the thoughts in this video can be credited to Steven Pinker’s Better Angels of Our Nature, a fantastic book on the civilizing process, the decline of war and about a million other things. You should start reading it today. It’s been at least five years since I read it, so it’s fair to assume the ideas have shifted on the way to this video…

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Why Obama Failed Syria, and Trump Will Too | MIC 13 | Syria 14

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Obama failed Syria, and Trump is going to fail Syria too. This video explains why. Most people will tell you that the US didn’t do enough in Syria. Actually it’s the complete opposite. We are now on our second president who doesn’t want us involved in Syria. Presidents can win elections, but they can’t beat the Military Industrial Complex.

This video is super depressing. But I’m excited that it lets me continue two of my best series, that have lain fallow for a while now. This is the 14th installment of my series on Syria, and it up-dates the story, incorporating some developments, like the disclosure and apparent end of Timber Sycamore, that I have been itching to discuss for weeks. It also returns in a big way to my Military Industrial Complex series. When I started the series over two years ago now, I had an end in mind. Still haven’t gotten there. We’ll see if I can pull it together!

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How Killing The Iran Nuclear Deal Would Hurt US Power

Donald Trump has proved that he is only capable of destruction. That’s not always a bad thing. On his first day he did away with the TPP, a move I supported, and a couple months back he did took the US out of the Paris Climate Change accords, which I did not support. But it’s the prospect of his taking us out of the Iran Nuclear Deal, as he almost did last week, that is the most frightening.

The conventional fox news narrative of the Nuclear Deal does not acknowledge the diplomacy that was necessary to force Iran to the table. To truly break the deal in a way that has any impact on Iran we need all the same international partners on board. If we don’t have that, we risk making the United States look foolish and weak. Foolish is nothing new. Weak is, and it would be a real problem. Today’s video explains the stakes.

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