When Allied forces, led by the United States, stormed onto Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, they were greeted by grateful Frenchmen as liberators. Given the face of militarization here today, it is hard to imagine that anyone will ever be happy to see us again.
President Trump claims to be an economic nationalist. But the only real jobs program he has created has been ICE and the associated gulags he is constructing for undocumented migrants to be brutalized and deported. How does he square “America First” with outsourcing the jobs of concentration camp guards to foreign countries?
ICE—which Trump has transformed into one of the world’s largest militarized forces—is already the nation’s largest domestic police force. How realistic is it to think this employment project for undereducated goons won’t turn against American citizens after completing the mass deportation of illegal immigrants?
The Vichy puppet regime in Nazi-occupied France organized a so-called “Passive Resistance” movement, akin to civil defense, to pretend that it was legitimate. Members were issued whistles rather than guns and were instructed to blow them hard if they saw something suspicious. In what passes for the American Left today, those who “resist” ICE are given whistles and told to blow them when they see ICE deportation agents in their neighborhoods.
After Renee Good was shot to death by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, right-wing defenders of the Trump administration suggested that she had brought it upon herself by failing to comply with her killers’ orders.
When widespread protests erupted in Iran over soaring inflation and high living costs, the Trump Administration openly supported the demonstrators and even pledged to launch military strikes against Iran if its security forces used violence against them. In the United States, however, when similar protests occurred — such as those following the killing of a woman by ICE in Minneapolis — the official response was strikingly different.
Among modern industrialized nations, the United States stands out as one of the very few that still lacks universal healthcare. Why do Americans accept this situation?
Under Article V of the NATO Charter, an armed attack against one NATO member is considered an attack against all members, including the United States itself. If the U.S. were to carry out its threat to attack Greenland—a Danish territory, and Denmark being a close NATO ally—this would create a highly bizarre and unprecedented situation.
Go to industry gatherings, especially in the media, and you’ll find that the old white male elite has been replaced, not by equality or equity, but by a different set of elites. The old boys’ club is gone, and that’s good. But this isn’t much of an improvement.
Whatever you think of the current administration, it is astonishing that so many Americans who hate the president and the government are willing to sit passively at home, rather than actively resist.
