Look in the Mirror

Trey Smith

As a perpetual emotion machine — producing and guzzling its own political fuel — the “war on terror” continues to normalize itself as a thoroughly American way of life and death. Ongoing warfare has become a matter of default routine, pushed along by mainline media and the leadership of both parties in Washington. Without a clear and effective upsurge of opposition from the grassroots, Americans can expect to remain citizens of a war-driven country for the rest of their lives.

Across the United States, many thousands of peeling bumper stickers on the road say: “End this Endless War.” They got mass distribution from MoveOn.org back in 2007, when a Republican was in the White House. Now, a thorough search of the MoveOn website might leave the impression that endless war ended with the end of the George W. Bush presidency.

MoveOn is very big as online groups go, but it is symptomatic of a widespread problem among an array of left-leaning organizations that have made their peace with the warfare state. Such silence assists the Obama administration as it makes the “war on terror” even more resolutely bipartisan and further embedded in the nation’s political structures — while doing immense damage to our economy, siphoning off resources that should go to meet human needs, further militarizing society and undermining civil liberties.
~ from Perpetual Emotion War Machine by Norman Solomon ~

While there should be no question whatsoever that much of popular opinion is shaped by political leaders, the mainstream media and the corporate elite, that doesn't let the rest of us off the hook! If we blindly allow others to think FOR us, then WE are as much the problem as they are.

Each one of us has been endowed with a brain. While it is true that different brains have different capabilities, most of us should be able to think independently.  We, of course, take in information from a variety of sources, but at the end of the day, what we make of this information is our own. If you choose not to exercise your own natural brain power, then you become a dog that is led around on a leash!

One of the main reasons that we live today in a perpetual state of war is that there is little public backlash. Our leaders plot and connive and we passively allow it. This is not to suggest that, if the public grew a backbone and demanded that we seek an end to war-making today, it would happen tomorrow. The monied interests would fight us tooth-and-nail. But if we stood in solidarity against both perpetual war and the growing police state, our leaders would find themselves in a tough position. For one thing, the elected ones would be fearful of being voted out of office!

So, while much of the blame for the state of things as they are must be laid at the feet of the powers that be, we bear a lot of the responsibility as well. If you are tired of the perpetual war machine, I have a question for ya. 

What are you going to do about it?

It All Depends

Trey Smith

After the bombings that killed and maimed so horribly at the Boston Marathon, our country’s politics and mass media are awash in heartfelt compassion — and reflexive “doublethink,” which George Orwell described as willingness “to forget any fact that has become inconvenient.”

In sync with media outlets across the country, the New York Times put a chilling headline on Wednesday’s front page: “Boston Bombs Were Loaded to Maim, Officials Say.” The story reported that nails and ball bearings were stuffed into pressure cookers, “rigged to shoot sharp bits of shrapnel into anyone within reach of their blast.”

Much less crude and weighing in at 1,000 pounds, CBU-87/B warheads were in the category of “combined effects munitions” when put to use 14 years ago by a bomber named Uncle Sam. The U.S. media coverage was brief and fleeting.

One Friday, at noontime, U.S.-led NATO forces dropped cluster bombs on the city of Nis, in the vicinity of a vegetable market. “The bombs struck next to the hospital complex and near the market, bringing death and destruction, peppering the streets of Serbia’s third-largest city with shrapnel,” a dispatch in the San Francisco Chronicle reported on May 8, 1999.

And: “In a street leading from the market, dismembered bodies were strewn among carrots and other vegetables in pools of blood. A dead woman, her body covered with a sheet, was still clutching a shopping bag filled with carrots.”
~ from The Orwellian Warfare State of Carnage and Doublethink by Norman Solomon ~

If a sniper guns down people going about their daily routine in America suburbia, we call it the work of a deranged person and an act of a heinous nature. If a military sniper guns down people going about their daily lives in some faraway foreign theater, we call the soldier an American hero who is doing his duty for his country. Likewise, as Solomon makes clear, a bomb meant to inflict grievous harm via shrapnel is patently evil if it is detonated outside of an American-led war, but the deployment of the same type of device by American or allied forces within the framework of an official or deemed war is par for the course and shouldn't cause anyone on our side to lose any sleep.

How we look at crimes against humanity all depends on the framework of when and how they are used. What may be considered a violation of international law when employed against us is nothing more than one arrow in our quiver when we are the one utilizing it. While this often true for all nations and peoples, it is especially pernicious when we're talking about the world's biggest international bully -- the USA.

The Dying Breed

Trey Smith

For the social compact of the United States, most of the Congressional Progressive Caucus has gone missing.

While still on the caucus roster, three-quarters of the 70-member caucus seem lost in political smog. Those 54 members of the Progressive Caucus haven’t signed the current letter that makes a vital commitment: “we will vote against any and every cut to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security benefits — including raising the retirement age or cutting the cost of living adjustments that our constituents earned and need.”

More than 10 days ago, Congressmen Alan Grayson and Mark Takano initiated the forthright letter, circulating it among House colleagues. Addressed to President Obama, the letter has enabled members of Congress to take a historic stand: joining together in a public pledge not to vote for any cuts in Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.

The Grayson-Takano letter is a breath of fresh progressive air, blowing away the customary fog that hangs over such matters on Capitol Hill.

The Progressive Caucus co-chairs, Raul Grijalva and Keith Ellison, signed the letter. So did Barbara Lee, the caucus whip. But no signer can be found among the five vice chairs of the Progressive Caucus: Judy Chu, David Cicilline, Michael Honda, Sheila Jackson-Lee and Jan Schakowsky. The letter’s current list of signers includes just 16 members of the Progressive Caucus (along with five other House signers who aren’t part of the caucus).
~ from Progressive Caucus Folds by Norman Solomon ~

I don't know about you, but I don't know what the word progressive means anymore. Progressives voted FOR the Wall Street bailouts. Progressives voted FOR many aspects of the so-called "War on Terror." Progressives voted FOR the defense authorization bill that allows a US President to kill American citizens without charges, a trial or a jury. Progressives have voted FOR the so-called Patriot Act more than once. And Progressives voted FOR the anti-labor, anti-environment North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

I'm not saying that all progressives voted for these things, but in almost every case, many progressives did. Even worse, "progressive" voters didn't hold their feet to the fire and often provided these elected progressives with the political cover to turn their backs on progressive values.

In terms of the issue Solomon writes about, the vast majority of the members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus won't buck their non-progressive President on a core issue important to their progressive supporters. So, what in the hell does it actually mean to be a progressive these days?

Afternoon Matinee: War Made Easy, Part 8 of 8

Afternoon Matinee: War Made Easy, Part 7 of 8

MLGW 3

Trey Smith

Every memory is a partial truth. Every forgetting might be a kind of lie; retroactive innocence, maybe not so innocent. Forgetting is a necessity and at times a betrayal -- opting for convenience and omission, survival and abnegation. The future may be possible but the past is impossible, in part a leaden weight of missed opportunities and and disintegration, compounded by immutability.
~ from Chapter 13 of Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State by Norman Solomon ~

For me, this goes straight to the heart of the subjectivity of the human mind. Our minds are subjective because they filter the world in a way that tends to make each of us ascendent. Put another way, our mind becomes a god, the final arbiter of what we believe is good and just.

Since most of us don't like to admit that our lives are dominated by self-absorption, many project their internal god-mind into the external world and create deities that are said to be distinct and separate from each of us. But while we have these symbols of divinity that are worshiped by the masses, the god that we see in the public sphere, unsurprisingly, is the exact same one that originates in our own god-mind.

Afternoon Matinee: War Made Easy, Part 6 of 8

MLGW 2

Trey Smith

We live in a time when nearly everything is supposed to have a point, a proximity to advancement or self-improvement; yet memory, deceptively simple and infinite and fourth dimensional, clear and murky, is an opposite of neat, cannot configure in the furrowed rows of field or brow. Looking back, we see mostly that we can't...
~ from Chapter 13 of Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State by Norman Solomon ~

Since my ability to view the past appears to be different than the norm -- I seem completely incapable of resurrecting the emotions tied to any event -- I am left to wonder just how prevalent this ability is. So, I'm asking readers (those who are not shy) to leave a comment or two about your own abilities to call up the past? When you think back to different occurrences in your life, are you able to get a feel for the emotions you felt at the time?

MLGW 1

Trey Smith

I am just now finishing a really good book by Norman Solomon, Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State. It chronicles the author's life in terms of the worldwide and national events and history that led him into a life as an activist.

Over the course of today (and, maybe, tomorrow), I will share some interesting comments he made in Chapter 13 -- a chapter unlike most of the rest of the book.

Only in omniscient fictions can pieces fit together with anything that approaches tidy. Our lives lack the smooth arc of drama's acts, while actual memory is on the chaotic side: tangled, in innumerable shades of gray and color, with double and triple and quadruple exposures, and moments that are uncountable.

As I've recounted in this space recently, I'm often left with little or no such exposures, though I do understand the tangled essence he speaks of. What about you?

Afternoon Matinee: War Made Easy, Part 5 of 8

Afternoon Matinee: War Made Easy, Part 4 of 8

Afternoon Matinee: War Made Easy, Part 3 of 8

Afternoon Matinee: War Made Easy, Part 2 of 8

Afternoon Matinee: War Made Easy, Part 1 of 8

The Eyes Have It

Trey Smith

I am currently reading Norman Solomon's autobiography/social critique, Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State. Though I'm in the early portions of the book -- I'm just starting in to his first year at Reed College in Portland, OR -- he already has reminded me that the FBI casts a wide net that snares lots of little fishies.

Solomon relates how he first wound up on an FBI watch list: at age fourteen, he picketed in support of integrated housing. As a high school senior in metro Washington, D.C. he formed a student group to oppose war and the FBI kept tabs on that. While at Reed College, he and friend started a publishing company for anti-war leaflets and the FBI was interested in this activity as well.

As I get farther in the book, I'm sure I'll find out that the FBI continued to keep watch of him as he protested and wrote about nuclear disarmament, environmental protection and, again, his steadfast opposition to war. Though he is now a well-known progressive activist, the FBI first began tracking his activities when he was a relative nobody.

We're always told that the this nation's massive security apparatus is here to protect us and that the various agencies are always on the lookout to thwart vile terrorists who mean to do us harm. The historical record tells us otherwise!! It seems that an inordinate amount of time, money and resources are expended keeping a watchful eye on anyone who disagrees with the elite ideology.

Though I have never made a request to the FBI to see if they have a dossier on me, I would be dumbfounded if they didn't. Like the then-14 year old Norman Solomon, I'm a very small fish in a large sea. But I have been very open in my overall disdain for capitalism and what I see as the malevolent direction this country has been heading for most of my adult life.

I have organized large protests and demonstrations against armed aggression in two states. I have testified before numerous legislative bodies on issues such as progressive taxation, farmworker rights, protection of the environment and opposition to war. I worked for nearly an entire decade for Oregon's largest peace organization.

On top of all that, I'm an avowed socialist -- not a socialist with a lower case s, but the kind with a bold capital S. I ran for the House of Representatives and Governor in Oregon on the Socialist Party ticket. I served as treasurer for the Socialist Party USA and the Socialist Party of Oregon as well as the treasurer for the Pacific Green Party and the Green Party of Washington State. In all of these positions and more, I served as one of each organization's public spokespeople.

And though I am no longer an on-the-streets activist, I make my views abundantly clear on this blog. So, one certainly could say that I'm a small fish with a big mouth! :D

...Just the kind of individual that the FBI likes to keep tabs on.