Ever notice how, when there is a foreign policy crisis, the discussion is always between intervention and more intervention? There’s never anyone at the table on TV news discussion shows who is a pacifist who is simply is against war, or even someone who suggests that this particular crisis is something the US ought not to be involved in.
The White House has been pressuring Fox News in public and through back channel communications to stop spreading misinformation about the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines. This sounds innocuous but there are frightening implications, not least the question of whether anyone can believe something simply because the government says that it is true. Then there is the question of whether there should ever be this sort of collaboration between government and the media that is supposed to be its watchdog.
Trillions of dollars have been spent. Thousands of American soldiers have been killed. Yet the United States is right back where it started in Afghanistan 20 years ago, with the Taliban advancing so rapidly that military experts believe they will soon control the entire country again. Some veterans are asking aloud, was the war worth the cost? Clearly not. The war was a mistake from day one. After all, Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan the entire time, not Afghanistan. And the 9/11 plot was hatched in Pakistan and probably funded by Saudi Arabia. We never should have been there.
Republicans are pushing through voter ID and other laws intended to reduce voting among people of color and others more likely to vote Democratic. Democrats are fighting back for obvious reasons. But what if you can’t vote in the first place because you don’t have, for example, a voter ID?
Fortunately, president Joe Biden followed through on last year’s peace deal with the Taliban and has ordered a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan. A war we never should have been in in the first place is coming to an end. But militarists are waiting in the wings with new ideas for mayhem for profit.
President Joe Biden signed an executive order asking the Federal Trade Commission to crack down on spurious “non-compete clauses” in employment contracts. 20% of American workers, including burger flippers, are covered by contracts that prohibit them from working for a competitor.
On a recent trip to Mexico I noticed that the sea life has been absolutely decimated since the last time I had been there. Nobody knows what they’ve lost.
Donald Trump left office six months ago, but traumatized Democrats are terrified that he could figure out some way to return to power, for example returning to the White House through an upset victory in 2024. While it is certainly possible that he could pull a Grover Cleveland, maybe they should focus on encouraging the Democratic Party to address voters’ needs now in order to reduce the chances of such a catastrophe.
As the United States completes its pullout from Afghanistan, the usual suspects worry aloud that the country won’t be able to manage without us. What they and other people with a neo-colonialist mentality don’t realize is that Afghanistan is a sovereign country and that we have been interfering with it unnaturally for 20 years.
Progressives say they are disappointed by the fact that Joe Biden is backing away from promises he made in order to attract their votes during the campaign. Though they certainly have the right to be annoyed, they should not be surprised. After all, Biden clearly didn’t have his heart in it.
