American electoral politics was originally designed to make the franchise as powerful as possible for as many voters as possible, but now things come down to a tiny minority of voters living in just a few battleground states. Maybe the rest of us shouldn’t bother.
The Biden Administration is setting the stage for tacitly endorsing Israel’s war against Gaza by remaining publicly silent until, ultimately, they finally come out in favor of a ceasefire. But it’ll only happen after Gaza is destroyed and its Palestinian inhabitants have been driven out into the desert.
Over and over, the military tells Americans that grave consequences would follow unless we fight and win in some overseas conflict. Yet we keep losing, and nothing terrible happens. When, if ever, will we see through the military’s fear-mongering?
Donald Trump, Biden and the Democrats warn, wants to get rid of democracy. Sometimes, however, you have to ask yourself what your government has done for you lately. When it comes to American democracy, the answer is not much.
Is the right to free speech real in a world in which there are so many disincentives for using it?
The Colorado Supreme Court ordered Donald Trump’s name removed from the ballot in that state on the ground that he is an insurrectionist, who tried to subvert electoral democracy, under the meaning of the 14th Amendment. 13 other states may follow suit.
Following the doctrine that it is easier to beg forgiveness than to obtain permission, Israel is engaged in the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip, with a view toward annexing it. It’s not hard to imagine that, sooner rather than later, beach resorts will replace the 2.3 million Palestinians who have been killed or driven out of their homeland.
No president or politician is perfect. But it’s especially dispiriting to see President Joe Biden actively cheerleading the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza. Tens of thousands of civilians have been gratuitously killed in what he himself describes as indiscriminate bombing, yet he continues to defy Congress in order to send more weapons of death to Netanyahu’s barbaric regime.
The swing state of Michigan will be in play next year, and many analysts predict that the Muslim diaspora in that state could prove pivotal. But which major candidate can they vote for? Donald Trump wears his Islamophobia on his sleeve with his repeated calls to limit Muslims from traveling to the US, as well as his loudly-declared support for Israel. Joe Biden, however, looks even worse as he declares “I am a Zionist” even after Israel wantonly slaughtered tens of thousands of innocent people in Gaza while barely giving Hamas a scratch. Choose your poison!
Whatever its merits, slow-walking a vote to take the temperature of GOP House members relative to an inquiry as a prequel to a possible actual impeachment is not an approach likely to result in the kind of dramatic moments that came out of the Watergate hearings.
