The Kakistocracy Watches Fox News
Donald’s motivation for ordering a cruise missile strike on the Syrian government air base that delivered a nerve-gas attack on rebel civilians in Idlib province? He saw horrifying pictures of the victims on Fox News. Reportedly, he was so incensed by the coverage of dead children with foam on their mouths that he immediately decided on a strike, which occurred just 60 hours later. There are so many problems with this explanation that it is hard to know where to begin. First, an immediate retaliatory strike which damaged the base from which the mission was flown and nothing else can be, rationally, justified. Second, it was technically a violation of international law, since it was done without the consent of the United Nations, NATO, or the government on which it was conducted.
Third, from a political point of view, it was the right move since it was very popular and distracted people from the notion that Donald is Vladimir’s puppet. Donald is, in truth, anything but Vlad’s puppet: he is more of a loose cannon. Donald is very difficult to blackmail, unless someone has documentary evidence that he directly colluded with Vladimir to throw the election his way; he himself has said that he could go out on Fifth Avenue in New York and shoot someone and it wouldn’t affect his popularity. Besides, it is hard to make an historically low popularity rating of 36 percent go down.
Fourth, do we want a president who makes decisions based on Fox News coverage of an event?
There are reports that Syrian rebels were disappointed with the strike because it had no effect on al-Assad’s ability to wage war on them. Militarily, it was a slap on the wrist. Truly, if this strike was justified, then a no-fly zone over the whole of Syria is even more justified; we can at least get NATO support for that, and Senate approval is also necessary. There is good evidence that Donald has no long range plan, but that he is leaning towards returning to Obama’s policy of regime change. That is more in line with the policy of the “deep state”, but sending American troops to Syria is not a good long term tactic as it will inevitably alienate locals and play into the Islamic State’s apocalyptic fantasies. Donald has already ordered 400 more American soldiers into Syria, in addition to the 500 or so Special Forces said to already be there. That is probably 400 too many. In addition, Americans are prime targets for capture and horrific execution, a propaganda bonanza for the IS.
Please read this article in Wikipedia, for your own good. It lays out a model of the news media that accounts for an enormous bias in the presentation of news. What is worse, it introduces the idea that when you consume something that is “free”, you are paying in ways other than money. For example, Facebook is “free”, but the program is designed to worm personal information out of its users that is then used to target advertising directed to them. The advertising revenue is what pays the money to keep Facebook running, and revenue is maximized by intensely particularized targeting of that advertising to users who are most likely to buy the products advertised.
Thus, as a user of Facebook, you are the product being sold to the advertiser, who is the actual consumer, economically speaking. The concept is neatly summarized in the “meme” illustrated above.
A monthly consumer survey by the University of Michigan has revealed a stark political divide in expectations: Republicans see a great boom ahead, while Democrats foresee a recession. Clearly those who elected Donald expect him to lead a great economic improvement, a rising tide that will “lift all boats.” Unfortunately, the leaky boats will not last long, and consumers mired in student debt or chronic underemployment will find little to enjoy in the next couple of years: chances for a big infrastructure bill are slim because the Freedom Caucus won’t allow it.
The National Enquirer is a weekly tabloid that is sold in the checkout lanes at Walmart in particular. Their latest headline caught my eye: “Trump and Russia.” But when I turned to the story in the center it never mentioned Russia (the elephant in the room?) The whole story was about some claim that Obama had gone out of the normal chain of command and used “rogue agents” to wiretap Trump. Why? To gather information for blackmail. You’ll notice that treasure trove of information about Donald has never surfaced– making the blackmail motive slightly suspicious. But there’s more. The heads of the FBI and NSA knew about this for two years and did nothing. That’s what the story claims. That explains why none of this came out before the election: because Comey was blackmailing Obama. Can we please stop just making things up?
Hillary made an historic error by not getting on the bandwagon and proclaiming her support for help to the middle-aged, high school-educated white workers who have been so badly hurt, not just by the recent Great Recession, but by 30 years of regressive taxation that has prevented them from getting ahead while rewarding people who sit on their vast piles of money. The Democratic Party has stood by for years while the American union system was systematically destroyed by wealthy factory owners and heads of business who find justice for their employees too much trouble to allow. This has hollowed out the great Democratic base of working people and led to falling life expectancies specifically among white men, especially uneducated white men.
The whole slide into unreality and poverty could have been prevented if our American school system had sufficient federal support to provide equal and thorough educations for free to all at least through high school and vocational school. Instead, the grossly unequal system of payments for our school system– local land taxes– has been allowed to persist despite being wholly inadequate to supply all schools with equal and sufficient funding to provide a good education.
One of the most important aspects of a primary education that has been neglected is education in how to tell the truth from fiction, how to see when someone is pushing propaganda instead of actual facts, how to discover for oneself what the truth is. Many adults in America simply do not know when they are being lied to. That makes it so much easier for the oligarchs and plutocrats to spread fiction and continue their insidious campaign to destroy effective government in this country.
A study published in Nature on April 5 calculates that plants on Earth have increased their carbon-fixing activity by about 31% (+/- 5%) since the Industrial Revolution, primarily due to the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide and average temperatures in the last 200 years. A story also appeared in the New York Times reviewing the research. The study measured levels of a trace gas, carbonyl sulfide (CSO), that is produced by decaying organic matter and destroyed by photosynthesis, in Antarctic ice that has trapped tiny bubbles of air, for the last 54,000 years. Unfortunately, the increase in activity is nowhere near enough to compensate for deforestation worldwide, which has destroyed over two-thirds of all forests that existed before humans entered history. Fortunately, planting more trees will help the situation more as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rise.
Kakistocracy Initiates Wider War
According to the Guardian, the International Committee of the Red Cross has pointed out that Donald’s attack on a Syrian government airfield creates what they call an “international armed conflict.”
The situation in Syria “amounts to an international armed conflict” following the US airstrike on a Syrian airbase, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has said.
Iolanda Jaquemet, its spokeswoman, said: “Any military operation by a state on the territory of another without the consent of the other amounts to an international armed conflict. So according to available information, the US attack on Syrian military infrastructure, the situation amounts to an international armed conflict.”
It should be noted that, technically, the airstrike on Al Shayrat airfield is a violation of international law because it was carried out without the consent of the Syrian government or the backing of the United Nations.
The Kakistocracy Strikes Back
Thursday evening around 8:40 PM Eastern time, two US destroyers, the Porter and the Ross, scored 59 Tomahawk cruise missile hits on Al Shayrat airfield in far western Syria. By the way, each Tomahawk carries either a half-ton of high explosives or a multiple bomblet dispenser, and is capable of flying over a thousand miles from its ship launch. It is a matter of public knowledge that the US maintains stocks of about 3,500 Tomahawks. To compare the force level used, over 800 Tomahawks were used in the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and 79 were fired at Afghanistan in 1998 in retaliation for the bombing of US embassies by Al Qaeda.
The reason Donald ordered this missile strike is that he needs to appear presidential. As usual, he learned of the sarin gas attack in Idlib from Fox News, which he watches obsessively. Unlike virtually all presidents before him, he does not read briefing papers or participate in oral briefings from recognized experts. His view of the situation is colored by his need to distract us from the FBI investigation into his collusion with Russian hacking of our election.
The expertise for this air strike was entirely supplied by our military, supervised by Mattis and officers under his command. Donald was not required to perform any planning, but was presented with three options, from which he chose the two smaller for further consideration. It should be noted that our military is a self-selected expert system which is nearly impervious to Donald’s influence but will cheerfully exercise any military adventure he may approve. This presents the possibility that excessive and pointless military action will be a hallmark of Donald’s administration.
The other reason for this missile strike is that al-Assad violated his express agreement to refrain from the use of sarin after the previous attack four years ago resulted in a global backlash that forced him to destroy most of his stocks of nerve gas. Thus, a forceful response is justified and no-one in the US will object. Many will demand that we wipe out al-Assad’s entire air force, with which he prosecutes his fratricidal war.
The Kakistocracy Continues
Donald, in his latest news conference, was unable to frame an intelligible response to the question of what the United States policy would be towards the Iranian elements who support Bashar al-Assad. He has no concept of a nuanced policy, and he recently instructed his press secretary to say that the US policy towards Assad would be one of toleration, a reversal of the previous Administration policy seeking regime change. Assad’s response to this policy change was to launch a nerve-gas attack on civilians in an insurgent area, killing scores of innocent men, women, and children.
Donald’s statement after the nerve-gas attack characteristically blamed the previous Administration for its too-tolerant policy towards Assad. He fails to make the connection between his own “edict of tolerance” issued just days before the attack and blames Obama’s failure to militarily punish Assad for a previous attack four years ago. Donald is so far out of his depth that he is grasping at straws like a drowning man.
Worse disasters are sure to follow. Syria is only the most brutal conflict currently taking place. Other conflicts, like the 22 million people in Africa who are starving, will overwhelm Donald and cause untold suffering. We are in for a very bad time for at least the next two years.
Almond Trees Under Low Clouds
Familiar Views
Flooded Vineyard at Sunrise
Conrad Theodore Seitz 