Long Nights in Loserville

“It was outside the realm of what happens, so incongruous and out of touch with the way things are meant to be in the world that people would deny and dismiss and discount anything you said because it didn’t fit with normality.” Tom Burgis, Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World

The White House must resemble a funeral parlor these days. Rank and file staffers tiptoe in the corridors, deathly afraid of causing any commotion that might further upset the Big Baby in the Oval Office. Trump has finally stopped throwing himself on the carpet and screaming “Fraud” at the top of his lungs, but he continues to hurl Big Mac’s and French fries from his gilded high-chair. The defeated Orange Menace has kept a low profile of late, with few public appearances, but he’s as active on Twitter as ever, and his camp is working the grift as hard as they can, hectoring supporters for contributions to fight the fraud and thwart the steal. Most of the money raised will go to retiring the campaign’s debts rather than fund doomed-to-fail legal challenges.

Even though the GOP is utterly Trump’s party, he lost while most Republican candidates fared just fine. That must really gall Trump. It’s a flashing example of how much he is disliked by the majority of American voters. But, and this is a question the Democrats need to answer, what do the results in House and Senate races say about the Democratic Party?  

I’m pretty certain that a Biden administration will not spend much time, if any, probing the many misdeeds committed by Trump and his gang of miscreants. Like Obama before him, who declined to go after the criminal bankers who caused the Great Recession, or George W. Bush administration officials who sanctioned torture in the failed War on Terror, it’s not in Biden’s nature. He’ll call America to turn from the past toward the future, and in so doing perpetuate the gangrene that afflicts the American political and economic system: lack of accountability. In case you haven’t noticed, accountability and punishment in America is reserved for the masses, not the elites. The masses are lucky if they get three strikes before the heavy hand of the law lands on them, and far too many people are put away for a single mistake. Trump deserves to swing for all the damage he has inflicted on our fragile democracy, our standing in the world, the environment, government agencies, the federal courts and race relations. And for playing deadly politics with the Covid pandemic, deceiving the American people about the seriousness of the Coronavirus for months on end. Mocking people for wearing masks. Calling it a hoax. Blaming the Chinese.  But it’s not only Trump. His many enablers deserve punishment, too, starting with Chief Ratfucker, Mitch McConnell. Measure orange jumpsuits for Lindsey Graham, Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan, Doug Collins, Kevin McCarthy, Kelly Loeffler, Louis Dejoy, and Stephen Miller. (Add one of those masks like Hannibal Lecter wore in Silence of the Lambs for Miller. He’s a creepy fucker.) The lot should be chained together and marched down Pennsylvania Avenue. 

I’m not holding my breath. 

The Cult of Trump may wither for lack of oxygen once the Orange Menace leaves the big stage, but it won’t disappear entirely because the conditions that gave rise to Donald Trump are still present. Cancerous cells don’t disappear of their own accord. The collective anger Trump tapped into in 2016, and spent the last four year stoking, won’t vanish. Millions of Americans are angry, frustrated, scared to death of the future and on the lookout for someone or something to blame. That impulse isn’t going away; it will continue to simmer. The Proud Boys and other groups of that malignant ilk, have enjoyed their fifteen minutes of fame and notoriety, dressing up in their camo gear, lacing up their boots, and dreaming of a country free of people of color.  In their twisted view it can all be made the way it never was -- a white man’s Garden of Eden. They seem to believe that we can return to the time when women stayed in the kitchen and Negroes and Mexicans knew their place, go back to the days when this was a Christian nation, ruled by the good book. Sorry, boys, you cannot unwind the clock. The world’s changed, the colonies look different now, America has competition, our country is already a rainbow, but you refuse to accept it. It messes up your story of victimhood at the hands of women, minorities, and Chinese factory workers. 

I saw a report recently that said that the pandemic has been a boon for billionaires. Since the start of the pandemic, America’s oligarchs have made money hand over fist while millions of working people have struggled to make the rent, buy food, and pay medical expenses. In times good or bad, the wealthy make out fine, but what’s happening now is madness. It’s painfully clear that the economy is completely rigged in favor of the wealthy. Working people are playing with a two-headed coin. The only way the masses win is if the coin lands on its edge, and how often does that happen? It took nearly half a century for the nation to get to this level of wealth inequality. It took gutting the New Deal, easing regulations on big business and putting a boot on the throat of organized labor; it took a reinterpretation of antitrust laws that allowed monopolies to form; it took numerous Supreme Court rulings that benefitted business and weakened the rights of workers, voters, and consumers; and it took massive tax cuts for corporations and the rich. Ever since Richard Nixon loaded the Supreme Court with business-friendly, conservative justices, working people and consumers have lost ground. 

The anger millions of Americans feel, and that Donald Trump skillfully harnessed against illegal immigrants, NAFTA, liberals, and China, is misdirected. That’s not what did us in; the style of capitalism we play is the culprit. Winner-Take-All. Too Big to Fail. No Monopoly Too Powerful. The Wall Street money guys, with help from Democrats and Republicans, killed the American Dream. 

 

Mitch's Fever Dream

 

“Free black people were forbidden to carry firearms, testify against a white person, or raise a hand against one even in self-defense.” Isabel Wilkerson, Caste

When I heard the news that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had passed away, I knew that Mitch McConnell would immediately start the wheels in motion to get another Federalist Society-approved judge on the Supreme Court. McConnell is about one thing and one only: power. He could care less if people call him a hypocrite, partisan, immoral, unethical, or Trump’s lackey -- none of it matters as long as McConnell can pack the federal courts with enough ideologues to sustain minority rule for the next generation. That’s McConnell’s fever dream, and he’s very close to making it a reality. Every gain won by Women and minorities, gays and lesbians and transgender folks, every protection for the environment, voting rights, gun control, the Affordable Care Act, all, and more, will be in peril if McConnell succeeds. At this point, I see no way to stop him.  

American conservatives have been gunning to overturn Roe vs. Wade for decades. A small minority of people, most of them white men, will decide what a woman can do with her body for years to come. This small minority will make that decision for white women and black women, Asian women and Latinx women, rich and poor, rural and urban, devout and agnostic, my own daughter included. This small minority believes it has the right to exercise control over female reproductive power.

From the beginning, American democracy has been more myth than reality, a structure designed to be ruled by a white minority, an elite. Non-whites, led and schooled by the intrepid example and courage of African-Americans, particularly women, immigrant workers of both sexes, labor unions, struggled mightily for decades to gain room to stand and grow. They made some gains, but have spent the past forty years on a losing streak. The world changed. The economy changed. The compact between workers and employers, between banks and borrowers, between Made in America and Made in Cheaptown, Wherever, was deliberately severed. 

Every gain won by Women and minorities, gays and lesbians and transgender folks, every protection for the environment, voting rights, gun control, the Affordable Care Act, all, and more, will be in peril if McConnell succeeds. At this point, I see no way to stop him.  

The American Dream died years ago; we live in the American nightmare. 

But maybe the biggest change, the scariest change for white people -- especially white men -- is demographic change; the day when white people will be a numerical minority in this land is coming as inexorably as the death of Roe vs. Wade is coming. I think this demographic reality is what drives Mitch McConnell. A minority that controls the economy, banks, the courts, elections, and key levers of government, including the national security apparatus, can rule a majority. McConnell aims to lock minority rule in place.

Locking minority rule down tight is also why the Commerce Department is trying to monkeywrench the US census. Don’t like the direction the count is moving? Lop a month off the data collection deadline. Undercount the undesirables. 

When it comes to race, I’m not sure McConnell can stand in the Racist Hall of Fame with Strom Thurmond, George Wallace, Theodore Bilbo, Bob Jones, and Bull Connor. Maybe he can. What I am willing to wager is that McConnell holds fast to the belief that white people are inherently superior to black and brown people and deserve to rule. McConnell’s racism might be as deep-seated as Trump’s, but better disciplined. I bet bourbon is flowing in the Hall tonight as Strom and George and Theodore and Bob and Bull toast the outcome of the grand jury investigation of Breonna Taylor’s murder at the hands of police, in her own home, her own bed. No murder charges were returned. People waited many months for justice to be served, marched, chanted, rallied on social media, posted signs, but as has happened in other places at other times, Breonna Taylor is dead and no one will be held to account. 

Trump may hope the situation in Louisville spins out of control so he and William Barr can send the shock troops in to restore law and order, protect property, and keep the rabble in their subordinate place. Trump will dig the optics as they say, betting that scenes of police brutality will burnish his image as a tough guy, and frighten white people sufficiently to peel some support from Joe Biden.  

I steer clear of polls, prognostications, and predictions. Turnout is all that matters. It must be overwhelming for us to have any chance of dislodging Trump. He’s already pissed in the pool, called the outcome into doubt, instilled the idea in his rabid base that the election is only free and fair if he wins. The Electoral College may tip the balance in Trump’s favor, again, and there’s the possibility of the outcome being decided by the Supreme Court. The will of the people may be ignored again, unless the turnout is historic. If young people cast ballots instead of sitting on the sidelines, we have a chance. If African-American men turn out strong, we have a chance. If Latinx voters go for Biden in big numbers, we have a 50-50 chance. 

Why is justice so hard to come by for some? Why in America do we so often punish the victims? 

Back in 1997, the late Molly Ivins wrote, “There is so much anger out here. It is taking so many bizarre forms. And most of the media can’t even see it: Economic apartheid keeps the bottom half of society well hidden from the top half.” 

Oh, Ms. Molly, if you could see us now. 

The Isolation Diaries No. 27

“They never pay the slaves enough to get free.” Charles Bukowski

How many are still waiting on that $1200 check?

The one-time check

How long did the corporate honchos wait for their money?

I bet no CEO had to navigate a jammed website. 

One America for the rich, another for the working class, the poor, 

The expendable. 

It’s a story as old as the world, ruler and ruled

Master and slave,

Chosen few and condemned many. 

The American Dream is as hollow as a chocolate Easter bunny.  

If dark-skinned men in camouflage vests, AR-15’s

Slung over their shoulders, holstered sidearms, stormed a legislative

Body anywhere in America,

The state would shoot them dead. The media would call them

Rioters,

thugs,

A threat to public safety.  

We’re born into this, Bukowski said, no choice over where or when

Or to who,

But all leaving by the same exit, 

ticket punched in advance. 

A beautiful spring day in a pandemic,

Hummingbirds and Monarch butterflies, a sleek crow

Sitting on the back fence; lavender in bloom, Mexican

Sage, crimson roses, yellow snapdragon. 

Losing track of time, of days, yesterday is today, and today is tomorrow, 

Covid-19 still holds the winning cards, the biggest pile of chips, momentum

And mojo.

Mask, gloves, hand sanitizer, X marks the spot where you stand

Wait your turn, speak through Plexiglass. 

There’s still meat on the rack, eggs in the dairy, apples in the bin,

Plenty of beer and booze, luck still holding. 

This is our Banana Republic, love it or leave it. 

The rat and the worm, the crow and the 

Cockroach, 

The morgue is bursting its seams, 

and the furnace

Is booked solid. 

The master stands on the veranda

Surveys his fields, glances at the sun peeking over the horizon,

Looks at the people he owns, coughs, spits, and says, quietly,

“Get to it. They’ll be no slacking today.”

Chevy to the Levee

“Republicans believe that the rich need more money and the poor need less help. They support tax cuts for corporations and cuts in services for the vulnerable.” Editorial in The Nation, June 19/26, 2017.

Madness loose in the land, spurred on by capitalism’s death rattle, the endless drive for more profit, higher rates of return, growth, expansion. The super wealthy stash their coin in offshore accounts, away from taxing authorities and other prying eyes. Some of the wealthy build fortified bunkers for protection against the day when the entire crooked system implodes and the mass of impoverished people rise up, as people once did in France and Russia, and begin searching for those that caused their torment. Chris Hedges, journalist and prophet, calls America a tinderbox and it’s difficult to argue otherwise. It takes little imagination to imagine a full-scale government crackdown on protesters and dissenters, most police forces are already militarized to play this role, and if they aren’t, there are private goons for hire, well-equipped and eager to cash in on domestic upheaval.

America is morally bankrupt, a clear and present danger to its traditional allies, a danger to the planet itself. All the hoary mythology used to cloak America as a beacon of freedom, truth and justice, is being stripped away to reveal our true nature, who we really are, and the portrait isn’t flattering. The face of a true hypocrite rarely is.

The propaganda organs work overtime to control the narrative in order to maintain the status quo. There is no economic alternative to capitalism. Tax cuts produce jobs. The minimum wage cannot be raised or the world will end. Social Security is nearly bankrupt. We cannot afford Medicare for All. Greed is good, compassion is for wimps. And on the foreign front -- Russia, bad. Iran, bad. Qatar, bad (but they can buy our beautiful weapons). North Korea, bad. Saudi Arabia, good. Black or white, nuance abandoned and left to perish by the wayside. Enemies, threats. The nation must be ever vigilant, alert, ready to defend itself from the bad guys who hate our freedoms. We must bomb them before they bomb us. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. All problems can be solved by our beautiful military. Our cruise missiles. Our drones. Scour the kill list for new targets. We can see through the fog of war.

Orwell shakes his head. Told you so. Down the memory hole. War is peace. Truth is what the leader says it is. Slavery is freedom. You didn’t listen then, you won’t listen now.

Reign of terror. Reign of error. Reign of fools. Reign of greed. Reign of lies. Reign of bluster.

Hipsters sip $4 coffee and $15 craft cocktails, oblivious to the impending collapse. They tap their screens and keyboards, all synergy and branding and can’t miss business propositions. Self as commodity, substance buried under a layer of style. Acquire happiness in the marketplace. Enlightenment overnight from Amazon. Wisdom from Google.

Do you remember where you were when the American Dream died, when the party ended and the last note of music faded away?

Bye bye miss American pie.  

A Feeble and Horrible Year

“The great and terrible irony of capitalism is that if left unfettered, it inexorably engineers its own demise, through either revolution or economic collapse.” Robert Scheer, The Great American Stickup

I’ve never set foot within Iowa’s boundaries. It’s the middle land, flat country, with an economy centered on agriculture and insurance; the highest point in the state is Hawkeye Point at 1,670 feet above sea level. Every presidential election cycle, Iowa takes a turn in the spotlight as the center of the American political universe, and then it returns to being, well, Iowa.

So maybe Hillary Clinton and the Clinton family political machine isn’t invincible after all. Until the Iowa Caucus, Hillary looked the presumptive Democratic Party nominee, a shoo-in with too many advantages for any other candidate to overcome, especially one like Bernie Sanders who proudly proclaims  himself a socialist. Americans are conditioned from birth to fear socialists and communists and Maoists, or any other doctrine that doesn’t exalt free market capitalism; calling yourself a socialist is normally a political death sentence.

I wrote Sanders off in these pages some time back -- not because his economic message doesn’t resonate, it does -- but because the political status quo is so difficult to beat. The truth is that I desperately want to believe that someone like Bernie Sanders can be elected President, but my doubts are as strong as my desperation. The ruling class will not go quietly or let go of its privileges easily; they are on a major winning streak and control nearly every gear of power. Hillary Clinton is an ally of the ruling elites, one of them, a Wall Street suckup if there ever was one, and she will do their bidding when push becomes shove. Same goes for the Pentagon. Hillary seems to enjoy saber rattling, and she will be unlikely to throw a lug wrench into the perpetual war machine. Sanders might, although he’s not completely averse to militarism.

Sanders did better in Iowa than I thought he would and I’m sure the Clinton camp is concerned that Madam is in a battle from which she may emerge bruised or bloodied.

The Clinton coronation is now behind schedule.

The nation is clearly unsettled and seething with anxiety. The middle class is battered. Young people face a diminished future, with many saddled by student loan debt and lousy job prospects. Middle-aged whites, particularly males, have seen their economic and social advantages eroded. They need a scapegoat, and Mexican immigrants, Muslims and other minorities make for inviting targets. Donald Trump speaks in a language these people understand at a subconscious level. Though a complete buffoon, a joke that no thinking person can take seriously, Trump understands how to connect with certain people on a gut level. Make America Great Again is a nice sounding slogan and looks good on a bumper sticker, but what does it mean? Trump says he will make “deals,” as if the political world is merely an extension of a corporate boardroom. It’s not. The world is frighteningly complex and dangerous, many times beyond the Donald’s ken.

I’m not surprised that Cruz won Iowa, although the victory over Trump and Rubio doesn’t make Cruz any less creepy. Past GOP winners of the Iowa Caucus include Mike Huckabee and crazy Michele Bachmann, so winning Iowa isn’t, frankly, that grand a prize. Cruz will pick up momentum on the GOP fringes, with Holy Book thumpers and mainstream media handicappers, but Teddy will also learn that with frontrunner status comes intense scrutiny. Ted has made many bizarre statements during his political career, and all those birds will flock home.

Rubio is still my pick for the GOP. When the dust settles, and Trump and Cruz have totally freaked the GOP mandarins out, Rubio’s youth and ethnicity might prove a realistic default.  This hardly means Rubio is presidential material. None of the GOP contenders are; it’s a weak and sorry bunch of nitwits and hacks.  

More and more Americans are aware that something is fundamentally out of kilter with the way our society is organized, that the American Dream is only available to a select few, and that the means to redress the situation are missing. Thus the appeal of a political outsider like Trump or an unusual voice like that of Bernie Sanders. Too much economic and political power has lodged in too few hands, and the Casino Economy offers more jagged edges than benefits for working people.

When it comes to ideas, the GOP offers nothing but more of the same. Sadly, the Democrats aren’t much better, though at least Sanders is talking about middle and working class issues like college tuition, Medicare for All, and increasing the contribution of the wealthy to the common good. Better still, Sanders is not a serial liar like Hillary Clinton.

If nothing else, that’s refreshing, and in this feeble and horrible political year we take what we can.

Done with Change, Over Hope

I’m done with politics for a while.

I’m disgusted, dejected, and discouraged.

I’m done with change and over hope.

No more will I respond to e-mail alerts from well-meaning but underfunded progressive organizations, no more will I e-mail or phone the people who are supposed to represent my interests in Washington D.C., no more will I pull my hair and gnash my teeth over the latest Obama capitulation.

I can’t do it, at least not without driving myself crazy or into a prolonged depression. I thought the Bush years were aggravating – and they were – but to watch the candidate I voted for bend over and spread his ass cheeks to appease the GOP, well, that’s beyond what I can tolerate. The latest tax giveaway to the rich was the straw that snapped the camel’s spine. I called, I wrote, I signed petition after petition, yet the package went forward just the same, pushed by Obama, to the delight of the wealthy; they received the goodies their campaign contributions paid for.

If I keep writing about politics I’m going to become a crank, like the one Philip Roth describes in Exit Ghost: “Otherwise, I told myself, you’ll become the exemplary letter-to-the-editor madman, the village grouch, manifesting the syndrome in all its seething ridiculousness: ranting and raving while you read the paper.”

I’m not naïve. I expected a limited resemblance between candidate Obama and President Obama, but I didn’t expect that Obama would become the second coming of Bill Clinton, surround himself with Clinton-era apparatchiks, and take economic advice from the likes of Robert Rubin and Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner; I didn’t expect that he would bow and scrape and become Wall Street’s lackey.

I never thought that President Obama would endorse the Bush era economic plan: endless tax cuts that largely benefit the rich and endless foreign wars that benefit no one. But endorse them he has, putting his presidency and the Democratic Party in a box come 2012.

For a man blessed with such eloquence, why does Barack Obama find it so difficult to articulate a coherent vision of who he is and what he stands for?

Obama has taken to spinning the truth like a run-of-the-mill D.C. PR flack, calling the tax giveaway the product of compromise with the GOP and an economic stimulus package that will grow the economy. The truth is that the tax deal will exacerbate the federal deficit, add fuel to Republicans who want to dismantle Social Security and Medicare, and do little to promote job growth.

In Afghanistan, Obama claims things are on-track and that some American forces may depart next summer, though naturally this depends on conditions on the ground and how prepared the Afghan military is to take over. If the Afghan Army isn’t ready now, after nine years and billions of dollars, why should we believe things will be any different by mid-2011? Or by 2014 for that matter? Obama is selling us a fantasy at a time we cannot afford a costly and unwinnable foreign war. Strip away all the military-speak and the fact is that a few hundred al-Qaeda forces have effectively tied up 100,000 American troops – the sophisticated forces of an empire -- at a cost of $120 billion a year.

The war continues and the tax cuts continue and the calls for spending cuts continue and the tone deafness of the ruling class continues, and the people are impotent, far more interested in American Idol and the Kardashians than they are in how their children’s prospects are being diminished by a political and economic system owned and operated by plutocrats for the benefit of plutocrats.

Time to back off and think about something other than the death spiral of the American Dream.

POEM: Pipe Dream

I want to live in a country that considers a state of permanent
War
Abnormal

I want to live in a country where the prison population declines
Rather than increases

I want to live in a country that cares more about meeting human needs
Than meeting the corporate bottom line

I want to live in a country that doesn’t torture people
Under any circumstances

I want to live in a country where young black men
Have the opportunity
To become old black men

I want to live in a country that respects international law
All the time
Absolutely

I want to live in a country where the distance between rich and poor
Is a narrow creek
Not a wide ocean

I want to live in a country that reveres the natural world
Instead of treating it like a 7-11

I want to live in a country that recognizes the difference
Between
Fact and opinion

I want to live in a country that prosecutes the crimes of the wealthy
As vigorously as it does the crimes of the poor

I want to live in a country that appreciates the contributions
Of women
Enough
To pay them the same as men

I want to live in a country that tells the truth
About itself
Instead of hiding behind false myths

Don’t wake me up
I don’t want this beautiful dream
To
End

Looking for Mr. Jones

You don’t know what’s happening here, do you, Mr. Jones?

So sang Bob Dylan way back when, in a different American era, one that almost seems like an age of innocence now, even though it was anything but innocent. Still, I get the feeling that nobody knows what’s happening in America anymore – or more accurately – nobody in power knows. People on the street know well enough, even if they can’t put what they know into words. Not that they need to describe what they are living through, day after day.

The Fear that Hunter S. Thompson wrote about so often is upon us and we can’t shake it. The good Doctor saw it coming. What is the Fear you ask? Fear that the American era is over, that our global hegemony is untenable, and that the American Dream is finally and forever DOA. Fear that undesirables with dark skin, speaking in unfamiliar tongues or praying to an unfamiliar god are poised to overrun the country. Fear that our own government is a threat to freedom and liberty.

It’s a strange time, no doubt about it. The will of the people doesn’t seem to hold much sway in the scheme of things, but how can the will of the people compete with the buying and lobbying power of Corporate America? Plutocrats own the machinery of power, the airwaves, the courts, and the Congress; they write the rules and rig the game for their advantage and, judging by the obscene gap between the super rich and everybody else, their success can only be described as spectacular.

Take away the military power and the United States is a model banana republic.

Irony is everywhere. It takes a legislative slugfest to appropriate a relatively modest amount of money to extend unemployment benefits to idled workers, but billions of tax dollars are funneled into corporate bailouts, undeclared foreign wars and tax cuts for the wealthy with little or no debate and no cries for “fiscal austerity.” The Deepwater Horizon explodes and sinks, killing eleven workers and spewing millions of gallons of oil into the ocean. We hear next to nothing about those eleven workers or their survivors while BP spokespeople assure us that BP is doing everything in its power to make the Gulf right again. If this is true, why is so much of BP’s work shrouded in secrecy? Why won’t BP share its data with independent scientists? Our president tells us that Gulf beaches are open and that Gulf seafood is safe. If that’s true, why do locals refuse to eat the stuff?

Welcome to Oz. The Yellow Brick Road is due south. Keep walking.

Former senator Alan Simpson, co-chair of President Obama’s deficit reduction commission, is a crusty old fart who derides Social Security recipients as loafers, while he collects a generous taxpayer funded pension.

Glenn Beck, an unhinged right-wing demagogue, co-opts Martin Luther King Jr. and insists that he, Beck, is the man to restore America’s honor. Only a man with no honor could make such a bizarre claim.

A proposal to build a Muslim community center near Ground Zero in Manhattan that drew little attention when it was first announced suddenly becomes a lightning rod of controversy and vitriol that exposes a dark side of the American psyche. The deeds of a small group of fanatics from Saudi Arabia condemn an entire religion and its adherents as terrorists. Fear trumps common sense. Religious tolerance is jettisoned in favor of demagoguery. Hysteria tramples reason. All Muslims are guilty by association. All Muslims hate America. All Muslims are hiding explosives and looking for something or someone to blow up.

Where are you, Mr. Jones?

The United States invaded Iraq, destroyed Iraq, occupied Iraq, and is leaving (well, not really, not now, not ever) Iraq in a terrible political, economic, social and environmental mess. We call this victory.

Has everyone gone mad? Is there an antidote for this KoolAid?

Afghanistan is a military, monetary and moral sinkhole. Many of our allies have seen enough and are unwilling to ante up more coin or blood for a cause that is certainly doomed. The war in Afghanistan belongs to the United States, lock, stock and killing field. The war cannot be won under any circumstances, and the United States cannot exit without looking weak and emboldening the terrorists. Or so the conventional wisdom goes. The Afghanistan sinkhole will ruin us, despite General Petraeus’ promises to the contrary. Polling shows that a majority of Americans oppose the war but does this fact sway the politicians and generals?

Come back here, Mr. Jones. I want to talk to you, man.

The Democratic Party cannot tell a coherent narrative about what and who it stands for, and the Republicans do nothing but sing a chorus of No, No, No. Rigid ideology triumphs over pragmatic flexibility to the detriment of citizens from Maine to Oregon. How long can we continue this way?

Mr. Jones isn’t talking. Mr. Jones has nothing to say.