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Saturday, January 23, 2021
FAIR: Media Allow Republicans to Use 'Unity' as Tool of Division
CC News Letter 23 Jan - ‘Un-Trumping’ America
Many would have little dispute that Donald Trump was a president with very little intellectual endowment and international morality. They would still see him as a bumbling misfit in the White House whose four years in office were blemished by arrant mismanagement of both national and international affairs. Hence the dismantling of the Trumpian policy regime would have the virtue of resuscitating a win-win ‘liberal international’ order.
According to Dan Pfeiffer, “Whenever Trump did something that hurt someone or said something that offended everyone, there was something we could do. It was possible to turn the anger into activism, to undo the damage and right the wrong.” Pfeiffer, the author of Un-Trumping America: A Plan to Make America a Democracy Again is one of the most perceptive observers of American politics (who also served as senior adviser to President Barack Obama). He called ‘Trumpism’ a “plutocracy in populist clothing.” Two days before Trump quit the office, Pfeiffer tweeted: “Beating Trump has been the organizing principle for the progressive universe for the last four years.”
In less than a few hours after Donald Trump bragged —in his farewell address to the nation on 20 January 2021—that “We reclaimed our sovereignty by standing up for America at the United Nations and withdrawing from the one-sided global deals that never served our interests”, the new incumbent in the White House, Joe Biden, started undoing the damage that his predecessor caused to the nation through a series of reckless policies.
On the first day in office itself, President Biden stepped in with a spate of executive orders to rescind the policies of the Trump administration—that ranged from revisiting the climate change policy (which included rejoining the Paris Agreement), the management of the COVID-19, reentering the World Health Organization (WHO), to halting the controversial border wall and sensitive immigration issues.
One of the highest priority issues Biden stressed throughout the campaign was a review of all regulations and executive actions that patently affected the environment or public health. President Biden thus declared his resolve to rejoin the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement by reversing the Trump administration’s lopsided policy.
The Paris accord aims to reduce global warming and cut greenhouse gas emissions. The US was among 194 countries that signed the Agreement when Barack Obama was President. Trump annulled this decision two years later arguing that it was a “symbol of reassertion of our sovereignty.” He said that the accord put the U.S. at a disadvantage due to regulatory and financial burdens it would put on American business corporates. Trump also blamed China, Russia and India as ‘filthy’ nations, arguing that the agreement was unfair to the U.S. which “must pay for nations which benefitted the most.”
Now that a new instrument of acceptance of the Paris Agreement by the US—expressing its consent to be bound by the Agreement—was deposited with the UN Secretary-General, it was notified that the Paris Agreement would enter into force for the United States on 19 February 2021, in accordance with its Article 21 (3). In a summit held in December 2020, the countries emitting half of all global carbon pollution committed themselves to carbon neutrality, or net-zero emissions.
Upon the US decision to rejoin the accord, the UN Secretary-General reminded that “The climate crisis continues to worsen, and time is running out to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and build more climate-resilient societies that help to protect the most vulnerable.” The new White House team, which consists of ‘liberal internationalists’ knows that environmental security is fundamental to the health and human security in the world and a concerted global action alone can sustain peace and development across the world.
The fact that health security is one of the top priorities of the Biden Administration is testified by its immediate focus on the pandemic, among the executive actions signed by the new President—which mandated masks and physical distancing on federal property and by federal employees. The White House also issued a comprehensive anti-COVID-19 strategy, pledged a genuine ‘wartime’ strategy to expand vaccine distribution, supplies and testing. Biden’s $1.9 trillion rescue plan is part of this grand strategy to combat the coronavirus pandemic which already claimed more than 4.20 lakh lives with the largest number (more than 25 million) of infection cases in the world.
President’s executive order extended the federal eviction freeze to support those struggling from the COVID-19 economic consequence, set up a new federal office to coordinate a national response to the pandemic and reinstated the White House’s National Security Council directorate for global health security and defense, an office Trump had shut down. It may be recalled that Biden had criticised his predecessor for the incompetent response to the worst public health crisis in 100 years.
President Biden also reversed the process of withdrawing from the WHO. Last year, Trump had threatened to put a permanent hold on U.S. funding for the organisation unless it conformed to substantial changes. He had criticised the agency for its handling of COVID-19 and its relationship with Beijing. Trump also accused the WHO chief of “waiting too long” to declare COVID-19 a public health emergency.
President Biden announced that the U.S. will fulfil its financial obligations to the WHO as well as restore sufficient American staff who work with the organization. The US also plans to join the COVAX alliance—an initiative led by the WHO and two other groups, that seeks to secure greater access to COVID-19 vaccines for poor countries.
Right from the beginning of the election campaign, Biden has been forthright in his position on the issues of immigration. He said he would restore the credibility of the nation as a migrant-friendly country. Naturally, six of Biden’s 17 executive orders, memorandums and proclamations deal with immigration. He ordered efforts to preserve Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a programme that has sheltered hundreds of thousands of people who landed up in the US as children from deportation since it was put in place in 2012.
Biden also extended temporary legal status to Liberians who escaped from the civil war and the Ebola outbreak. While halting the work on border wall with Mexico, Biden sought to ensure that the interests of asylum-seekers would be taken care of. With this, the Trump administration’s contentious ‘remain in Mexico’ policy necessitating asylum-seekers trying to enter the U.S. from the southern border to wait in Mexico for American court hearings would be suspended.
The executive order ending the restrictions on travel and immigration from some predominantly Muslim countries and few from other parts of the world came as a relief to many. During Trump’s first week in office, the ‘Muslim ban’ at first restricted travel from seven Muslim-majority nations—Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Later a few more countries were added to the list which included Nigeria, Myanmar, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Tanzania, North Korea and some Venezuelan officials and their relatives. President Biden called these actions as “a stain on our national conscience and are inconsistent with our long history of welcoming people of all faiths and no faith at all.” The order directs the State Department to recommence visa processing for those countries and develop a plan to address people affected, such as those who were denied entry to the US.
The new administration also brought in an order asking federal agencies to prioritise racial equity and re-examine policies that bolster systemic racism. Biden repealed an order issued by Trump that required to exclude noncitizens from the census and mandated federal employees to take an ethics pledge that would commit them to upholding the independence of the Justice Department. Biden sought to take all lawful steps to ensure the adoption of the US Supreme Court ruling elucidating that LGBTQ people are among those protected from workplace discrimination.
Notwithstanding the fresh lease of life offered by President Biden on a number of issues bequeathed from the past, the new administration surely confronts an array of intractable economic challenges, intensified by the coronavirus pandemic. Even as tens of millions of people remain unemployed and hundreds of thousands of small businesses have been crushed, the wealth of the capitalist oligarchs have ascended to extraordinary levels—thanks to the ceaseless flow of capital from the Federal Reserve and global central banks—adding to the enormous accumulation of debt.
Joe Biden assumed office at a crucial global economic juncture. The World Economic Forum has recently brought out its 2021 Global Risks Report that warned that in a critical period of pandemic, “job losses, a widening digital divide, disrupted social interactions, and abrupt shifts in markets could lead to dire consequences and lost opportunities for large parts of the global population.” As a leading economic power, the United States cannot but see this economic scenario as a challenging, if not an inhibiting factor, in its global engagements. The success of the new administration depends on how effectively it negotiates with countries in the European Union, on the one hand, and China and other East Asian countries, on the other. The expectation is that with a team of ‘liberal internationalists’ in the Biden administration, there would be more room for diplomacy, international cooperation and constructive engagements, rather than a return to a ‘self-help’ system of international relations.
This article originally appeared in South Asian Analysis Group as Paper No. 6737.
The author is Director, Inter University Centre for Social Science Research and Extension (IUCSSRE), Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala. He also served as Dean of Social Sciences and Professor of International Relations and Politics, Mahatma Gandhi University. He can be contacted at kmseethimgu@gmail.com
IF YOU LIKED THE ARTICLE SUPPORT PEOPLE’S JOURNALISM
We know it’s fashionable to hypothesize that democracy is “dying” in the post-Cold War world. It’s true not only for some of the postcolonial democracies in the Third World, and some “new democracies” Eastern Europe, but of late, seemingly, it’s also true about the United States. I refer to the cover story of Foreign Affairs, “Is Democracy Dying? A Global Report” (May-June 2018)to understand the problem. Although it’s not a belated review of the essays in the above issue of the journal, yet it’s not irrelevant to my hypothesis that democracy in the US is gravely ill, and there’s no guarantee of its full recovery only because Trump is gone and Joe Biden has become the new President.
It’s unbelievable that the Foreign Affairs in its report on the state of “dying” democracy across the globe – which came out one and a half year after Trump had become the President – almost exclusively focused on the continuation of autocracy in countries like China, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia, and on the state of declining democracy in eastern Europe, and Myanmar. While Walter Russell Mead in his historical appraisal of the rise and decline of democracy in the US mainly focused on the retardation of democratic principles and values in the antebellum (pre-Civil War) and post-Civil War decades, from the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865 and that of President William McKinley in1901. Mead attributes the crisis of governance in the US under Trump to the IT Revolution, comparing it with the disruptive Industrial Revolution in the country during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Trumpism and what led it to its fruition – let alone its far-reaching consequences – are missing in his essay. Mead’s conclusions are quite complacent too. He believes that as humans are “problem-solving animals”, Americans thrive on challenges:
Americans, for their part, are the heirs to a system of mixed governance and popular power that has allowed them to manage great upheavals in the past. The good news and bad news are perhaps the same: the American people in common with others around the world, have the opportunity to reach unimaginable levels of affluence and freedom, but to realize that opportunity, they must overcome some of the hardest challenges humanity has ever known. The treasure in the mountain is priceless, but the dragon who guards it is fierce.
In the backdrop of what Trump has already achieved in, sort of, brainwashing around 75 per cent Republican supporters that Democrats somehow rigged the Presidential election to remove Trump from power, one isn’t sure if it’s time to go with Mead’s complacency and optimism about American democracy, or one should rather agree with what Ronald Inglehart ( “The Age of Insecurity: Can Democracy Save Itself?”, Foreign Affairs, May-June 2018) has cautiously argued as to how to save democracy, even in advanced democracies like the United States. He believes while “rising prosperity continues to move most developing countries toward democracy,” there’s nothing “inevitable about democratic decline” provided societies and governments don’t fail to “address the underlying drivers”, which destroy democracy.
Since “global democracy is experiencing its worst setback since the 1930s”, as Gideon Rose, Editor of Foreign Policywrites in the above-mentioned issue of the journal, one fully agrees that “the United States has turned out to be less exceptional than many thought”, in this regard. What Trump did or tried to do were centralization of power in the executive, politicisation of the judiciary, attacks on independent media, the use of public office for private gain have collectively harmed democracy in the US. Whether the Biden Administration will be able to reverse the process of democratic regression in the country is the most important question today, for the US and the rest of the free world! Meanwhile, the storming of the US Capitol by fanatical, and fascistic Trump supporters on 6th January 2021, and most importantly, the overwhelming majority of Republican supporters’ approval of Trump and whatever he believes should be done to democratic institutions, civil rights, human rights and human dignity within and beyond the US will continue to haunt all democracy-loving decent people in the world.
Then again, the rot in the realm of US democracy did not set in with the Trump presidency. The process had started with the creation of the artificial entity called the United States of America with all the lofty promises made by its founding fathers to uplift democracy, equality, freedom, and human dignity, while some of them were themselves slave owners and the overwhelming majority of White Americans believed in the efficacy of slavery, apartheid, and subjugation of women, which are antonymous to the concepts of democracy and freedom. Thus, all rhetoric against Trump since his becoming the President – especially since his incitement of White Supremacist terrorists to storm the Capitol on 6th January – singling him as the only enemy of democracy and freedom in the US is as hollow as an empty pot! Trumpism is the culmination of the socio-political and economic unjust practices and institutions that continued ever since the European settlement in America to discriminate against and persecute the non-White, poor-White, and women. And, despite the abolition of slavery in the early 1860s, African Americans virtually remained slaves up to the Declaration of Civil Rights in 1964.
Actually, stethoscopic and lab tests of various government institutions and policies from the Watergate scandal to the divisive, racist, and undemocratic rhetoric and policies of Donald Trump and his administration, would have revealed a lot more about the state of ailing US democracy. Although touted as the “oldest democracy” in the world, the US since its emergence is a fractured, artificial entity; and not a democracy even in the very rudimentary sense of the expression. How could a country be called democratic with institutionalized slavery, and apartheid, that officially lasted for a hundred years after the abolition of slavery? Thus, slave owners’ declaration of independence and rights of men (exclusively for the White people) was a tale, “told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”, as Shakespeare would have written about American hypocrisy and hyperbole!
One doubts if there is any room for complacency or any convincing proof about the US being a stable democracy, not to be a wavering, irresolute one! The way swastikas and the Confederacy flags are flaunted in public, statues of slave owners are protected as national heritage, and some members of the clandestine KKK endorsed Donald Trump as President (and have been solidly behind him even after the two rounds of his impeachment), one has reasons to be sceptic about the future of democracy in America. Interestingly, while more than 80 per cent of Republicans support Trump and believe Biden was elected through a rigged election if there’s any reason for complacency about the future of democracy in America! Conversely, one wonders, as the US almost took a hundred years to abolish slavery, and another hundred to grant civil liberty and equal rights to the African Americans (at least on paper) after its independence if it’s going to take another hundred years since 1964 to become a true democracy in the 2060s! Then again, in view of the prevalent mistrust and lack of mutual respect among American politicians and their followers, partially demonstrated in the violent takeover of the Capitol by Trump supporters on 6th January, one can’t be that optimistic about the future of democracy and civility in American politics in the near future.
Gone are the days of Huntingtonian and Fukuyamaian rhetorical optimism about the future of democracy in the world. The way George W. Bush and his British and Australian surrogates, Tony Blair and John Howard (along with others), invaded Iraq in March 2003 – which was a totally unjustified neo-imperialist war with totally fabricated evidence about Saddam Hussein’s possession of so-called Weapons of Mass Destruction – exposed Western hypocrisy (under US leadership) about its so-called love and respect for democracy and freedom. Thus, whatever Samuel Huntington in his The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (1991) and Francis Fukuyama in his The End of History and the Last Man (1992) argued about democracy, as the ultimate destination of human beings across the world – because of the so-called “delegitimization” of autocracy everywhere – became as obsolete as telegraph after the IT Revolution. This happened not because of any inherent fault with democracy, but because of the hypocrisy of the Western vendors of democracy and freedom under the leadership of America. By now people across the world know what America and its allies actually mean – and don’t mean – when they say they love democracy and freedom! The Biden Administration is least likely to succeed in salvaging the wrecked confidence in US democracy among Trump supporters (the majority of Republican voters), let alone the victims of Western democracy and freedom across the world!
Now, the Biden Administration must right the wrong and salvage democracy and guarantee equal rights and opportunities to all Americans. It also needs to restore the tarnished image of America as a dependable friend to its old allies; and to nurture the CBM process among victims of its barbaric invasions in the Arab World, Afghanistan, and beyond. Above all, the US must play the role of an honest broker in the arena of international politics. However, the chances of that happening are extremely slim. Except halting the Trump decision to withdraw funding from the WHO and respecting the Nuclear Deal with Iran, the Biden Administration is least likely to do much in gaining respects of victims and marginalized people anywhere in the world. His would-be Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, has already praised Trump’s Israel policy. He hasn’t even mentioned (Israeli) “Occupation” of Palestinian land, “Human Rights of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza”, and the ”Jewish Settlements” in the occupied West Bank. In view of Biden’s forthcoming pro-Israeli and anti-Palestinian policy, it’s evident that his one is not going to be a trustworthy regime and a benign superpower – Joseph Nye’s so-called “Soft Power” – to the world, especially to countries like Iran, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, and the Palestinian Authority. Only by signing the Paris Climate Agreement, imposing some soft sanctions on Saudi Arabia for its unjust war against Yemen (as proposed by Blinken), and resuming funding to the WHO won’t make America safe and great again! Most importantly, the Biden Administration must pay heed to the growing White supremacist terrorist threat in the US, and the fast destabilization of the world order by regional powers like India, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. Biden knows it quite well the days of US complacency as the only superpower in the so-called unipolar world are gone, maybe gone forever! He needs to address his domestic and external problems. Only a just peace at home and abroad can stabilize America and the world at large.
Only a justice to the marginalized and angry people within can be a reprieve for the Biden Administration. Most Trump supporters are not only angry, fascistic terrorists (racism is inherent in all fascist outfits), they are also among the most marginalized people in America having very little or no job security, health insurance, and prospects of going up (excepting for a tiny minority among them who achieve their “American Dream”). Biden would be fortunate if Trump is disqualified to hold office, and floats his own promised “Patriot Party”, which would divide and substantially weaken the Republican Party, and would thus help his administration in the near future. He must understand the marginalized people across the world also want justice, peace, and prosperity. They have been directly or indirectly the victims of America’s highhandedness, neglect, and duplicitous relationship with dictators and regional hegemons in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, India, Bangladesh, Uganda, and elsewhere in the Third World.
We believe only meaningful CBMs at home and abroad can restore the elusive peace and global order. Biden has a big responsibility and challenging job to achieve both these goals. In hindsight, we possibly can forgive Huntington and Fukuyama for their over-optimistic exuberance about the success of democracy as the panacea to most problems in the post-Cold War era. They didn’t anticipate George W. Bush’s (and their allies’) rogue behaviour, the unnecessary invasion of Iraq, which Saddam Hussein aptly said was the “mother of all wars” in the world! In sum, as the good old days of gunboat diplomacy and invasions of countries, which were in vogue up to the fag end of the Cold War, are over in the post-Cold War era (especially, in the wake of the IT Revolution), so are over the old days of appeasing the marginalized people in the name of democracy and freedom. In sum, as marginalized Americans have lost faith in democracy, so have their counterparts in the world demand empowerment of the grassroots with people’s democracy. Can Biden deliver this to his own people, and eventually, to the marginalized masses across the world?
Taj Hashmi is a retired Professor of Security Studies at the APCSS in Honolulu (Hawaii). His major publications include Global Jihad and America: The Hundred-Year War Beyond Iraq and Afghanistan (SAGE Publications, 2014). He holds a PhD in modern South Asian History and is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society (FRAS).
Consequently, when rioters killed one police officer, savagely beat another, tried to gouge out the eye of another as he was crushed, and injured more than fifty, it’s unlikely that the vicious attackers believed they were behaving badly.[1] Instead, they probably felt brave and heroic. This is critical to understand—not to excuse them, but to watch out for this loophole of conscience in us all.
Those who wage war perpetually believe their enemy’s violence is malicious but their own violence is good. Yet war is ineffective as a means of improving society. Any great thing wars have supposedly achieved—freedom, justice, unity, prosperity, security—could have been achieved more effectively and economically without war.
War doesn’t deliver the goodness and glory it’s advertised to offer. War brings despair, trauma, destruction, insanity, poverty, disease, starvation, rape, torture, bodies blown to bits, dead animals, leveled trees, unseen explosives, slaughter, and a seething distrust that cripples society’s ability to ever be peaceful.
War spawns roving gangs of criminals who utilize the chaos to kidnap, murder, and steal. War condemns to death those who refuse to take sides and so are killed as traitors by violent extremists.
War unleashes self-hatred within individuals, propelling them to commit unspeakable atrocities. Above all, war slickly and undemocratically places the reins of power in the hands of believers in violence. Once out of Pandora’s Box, it’s hard to get war back in.
Yet developing non-violent conflict resolution skills is challenging in a nation that has been mesmerized since birth by the notions that war destroys evil and violence is the key to freedom and the proof of pseudo-masculinity. In response to conflict abroad, US policymakers typically send money and weapons for the “good” side to kill the “evil” side. Even within our borders, the form of discussion between opponents, the debate, is only verbal war, with goals, not of truth or harmony, but of conquest—beating the other side.
What we really need to develop is cooperative dialogue, in which opposing sides sincerely work together to express themselves clearly and step into the other side’s shoes to try to understand their feelings. The purpose of cooperative dialogue isn’t to dominate, cave in, or find a compromise down the middle. The purpose is to heighten caring, relieve alienation, deepen understanding, and develop solutions that address each side’s major fears and goals. Dialogue brings to life the very heart of democracy: caring equally for all. Whether fears are rational or irrational, they’ve got to be addressed with caring. Otherwise, they’ll continue to haunt future generations.
Obviously, cooperative dialogue can’t be facilitated by certain Republicans or Democrats who, infamous for their bullying and pointless displays of machismo, just don’t have what it takes for dialogue. However, plenty of other people undoubtedly possess the relevant skills, logic, creativity, and personality.
After 9/11, for example, US policymakers should have pounced on the opportunity to initiate cooperative dialogue, not to excuse 9/11, but to thoroughly understand and address the grievances behind it with practical solutions. Dialogue need not spotlight violent militants, but it should include members of the numerous peace-loving Middle Easterners who condemned 9/11 yet sympathized with al-Qaeda’s grievances.
Similarly, the violence of January 6 was reprehensible. There’s no need to give public status to violent rioters with a TV interview, but there is reason to engage in dialogue with Trump’s supporters, particularly the non-violent, and tend to their fears.
January 6 has raised many questions about double standards of behavior, such as whether authorities would’ve reacted differently to rioting blacks or Muslims. But we should acknowledge another horrific double standard that pertains—not to the behavior of police towards rioters—but to the compassion we’re allowed to feel for victims.
For there’s another group of patriotic Americans that kills—without a prick of the conscience—in the name of democracy and freedom. Who are these Americans? Our very own US foreign policymakers and troops. Where is the outrage and compassion for the suffering of foreign targets of these Americans?
“But they really are protecting the nation, democracy, freedom, and values! Their violence really is necessary!” some may protest. “Troops and policymakers cannot be compared to pro-Trump treasonous criminals!”
Obviously, there are major differences between the groups and even within the groups. But there’s one specific feature they share: their belief that their violence, or at least intimidating force, is necessary to protect the US, democracy, freedom, and values.
Who’s to say that both groups aren’t deluded?
To his disgrace, Trump goaded his patriotic followers into committing violence in DC.
But guess what. Before Trump, two centuries of presidents goaded patriotic Americans into supporting and committing violence on several continents.
Are we expected to believe that right-wing rioters are brainwashed by falsehood when storming the Capitol but US policymakers, troops, the media, and the public have been fully informed when storming indigenous and foreign nations?
To justify funding the Contras, we’re to believe lies that they were fighting for freedom in Nicaragua. To justify the Persian Gulf War, we’re to believe lies that Iraqi troops tore Kuwaiti babies from incubators. To justify the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan, we’re to believe lies that the Taliban supported the 9/11 strikes and that Afghan women want US troops to secure their equality. To justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, we’re to believe lies that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and supported Al Qaeda and that US troops could improve life for Iraqis.
Killing for goodness and God is deeply rooted in our culture—and so is the deluded mind that accompanies such unholy convictions. The Salem witch trials in seventeenth century New England were led by Puritans convinced of the goodness of their actions and the necessity of violence to rid their community of evil. Four years later, with refreshing candor and humility, twelve Puritan jurors admitted that they’d been wrong and their minds had been clouded:
“We confess that we ourselves were not capable to understand, nor able to withstand, the mysterious delusions of the Powers of Darkness and Prince of the Air. . . . Whereby we fear we have been instrumental with others, though ignorantly and unwittingly, to bring upon ourselves and this people of the Lord the guilt of innocent blood.”[2]
Will any perpetrator of violence amongst US policymakers, troops, protestors, and counter-protestors ever have similar courageous insight?
How do we expect rioters to reject all they’ve been told by Trump when Americans themselves—or at least their political leaders—gobble up all they’re told about allegedly evil, “freedom-hating” Afghans, Iraqis, and Iranians and the “necessity” of war to save the US, democracy, freedom, and values?
If we want our behavior to be any better than that of the Capitol rioters, then we’d better get serious about searching for the full truth and not accepting the skewed fraction of it that promotes violence. The US War on Terror has directly killed more than 800,000 Middle Easterners since 9/11, has indirectly killed many more, and has placed millions in a state of trauma, destruction, and despair far worse than the January 6 riot.[3]
Notice that it’s easy to feel sorrow and rage over the horrendous suffering of police and US legislators in DC. Why? Because the media showed it all to us with detailed descriptions, videos, and victims’ names.
Without diminishing our sympathy for the DC horror, it’s vital to acknowledge that Americans have been deliberately blindfolded to the trauma wreaked on foreign populations by US wars. If Americans saw that pain and suffering, public outrage over these wars might finally enable us to truly care equally for all.
Why not interview Afghans and Iraqis whose lives have been pulverized by war? Why not interview Iranian civilians so we can learn to sympathize with potential victims of US wars instead of sympathizing with war aims? Wouldn’t it help US policymakers create better policy if they understood the negative consequences of their actions so they could better evaluate the net effect of policy options?
Or are reporters considered unpatriotic traitors if they inform viewers of enemy civilians’ suffering and perspectives—information that might prick the conscience?
If patriotism requires us to have faith in the goodness of killing without searching for the full truth, then we’ve no business condemning the violence of pro-Trump “patriots.” Or is such uninformed, violent patriotism admirable only when we attack foreigners but not when we attack fellow Americans? If so, patriotism isn’t even a quality worth acquiring.
Some won’t like this parallel of patriotic violence between pro-Trump rioters and US policymakers and troops. They’ll view the parallel itself as unpatriotic. But which killing is right and which wrong? Who’s brainwashed and who’s not? Better that we all question ourselves and permanently check the hand that would tie a noose, shoot a bullet, or drop a bomb. Don’t let injustice slide. Engage in dialogue. Create dynamic solutions. But don’t be violent.
And beware: if you commit violence and your conscience doesn’t prick, if you believe your killing is necessary to preserve democracy, freedom, and values, search further for greater understanding to help withstand “the mysterious delusions of the Powers of Darkness and the Prince of the Air.”
Kristin Y. Christman is a contributing author to the anthology Bending the Arc: Striving for Peace and Justice in the Age of Endless War (SUNY Press).
[1] “‘I Would Have Done That for Free,’: DC officer at Being Crushed against Door,” Jan. 15, 2021, https://www.nbcwashington.com.
[2] The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc., Jane Polley, ed., American Folklore and Legend (Pleasantville, NY: Reader’s Digest, 1978), 20.
[3] Neta Crawford and Catherine Lutz, “Human Cost of Post-9/11 Wars: Direct War Deaths in Major United States War Zones,” Nukewatch Quarterly, Winter 2019-2020. Originally published in “Costs of War,” Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown Univ., posted Nov. 13, 2019, https://watson.brown.edu.
“A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself.” – Joseph Pulitzer
A media system set up to serve the needs of the Financial Institutions will not serve the interests of the majority of the population.
Media ownership, since the Bill Clinton deregulation, has been greatly concentrated and globalized. 1. Its relationship with the Neo-liberal global economy has been solemnized. It is as corrupt as any policy making medium in the West. Public service broadcasting has all but collapsed. The remaining ones are actually in the grip of barely disguised corporate finance. Culture has been commercialized. The first amendment of the US constitution has been perverted to offer the corporations the rank of individuals and corporate leaders would not be held responsible for their acts. The latest US SC ruling, corporations can spend as much as they want in lobbying, reinforces the Multinational Corporate (MNC) power and reach. 2.
The Internet, touted as beyond the reach of MNCs, is being incorporated in the commercial media systems. 3.
Bill Clinton’s deregulation allowed the takeover of CBS by Viacom. AOL swallowed Time Warner in the largest merger in history (valued at $160 billion). Time Warner merged its music operations with EMI, leaving 90% of the music market in the hand of four entities. The Tribune Company bought Times Mirror, making every major newspaper chain a part of a large media monopoly. 4.
With corporate intrusions, the Public system-NPR and PBS- is also now within the ideological confines of advertisement supported, profit-driven systems.
Local commercial media are consistently reluctant to offer critical analysis of powerful local interests, which are the major advertisers. 5.
In the spring of 2000, the Boston Herald suspended its consumer affairs columnist, Robin Washington for a series of articles on Fleet-Boston financial corporation, which not only advertised in the Herald, but also loaned funds to it. He was eventually reinstated because of public protest, but also because he was one of the four African American staffers in the large 235 person editorial staff. 6.
Commercial media tend to provide favorable coverage to politicians, who offer them subsidies and favorable regulations. For his book, “The Media Monopoly,” Ben Bagdilkian used the Freedom of Information Act to unearth the information that major media promised Nixon support in the 1972 reelection campaign if he supported the Newspaper Preservation Act (2).7. Corporations routinely get their local station managers to call on their congressmen to support the corporate position on media legislation. A top executive of the Hearst Corporation, owner of San Francisco Examiner, it was revealed under deposition, had offered editorial support to Mayor Willie Brown of San Francisco, then up for reelection, if Brown would give his official blessing to Hearst’s buying San Francisco Herald. 8.
The death of JFK Jr, his wife and her sister in a plane crash was treated by the media as, “The return of the Messiah or intelligent life on Mars”. 9. The Seattle protest during a meeting of WTO four months later, was virtually ignored till the meetings had to be closed down. 10.Monica Lewinsky and O.J. Simpson got much more coverage.
A few outstanding journalists produce good analytic pieces, but they are published as a token of impartiality and are swamped by pro-capitalist writings. 11.
The issue of military spending does not find adequate coverage as it offers corporate welfare, whereas spending on education and health are vigorously criticized. 12.
The widening gulf between the richest 10% who own 76% of the nation’s net worth , (13) half of which is owned by the richest 1%, whose income went up steeply in 1980’s and 1990’s (14) and the poorest 60% whose income went down in the same period is not mentioned in the commercial press.15.
On the other hand the boom of the 1990’s’ is vociferously lauded. 16.
The prison population in the US has more than doubled since 1980,s; it has five times more prisoners per capita than Canada and seven times more than Western Europe. With 5% of the world’s population, it has 25% of the worlds’ prisoner population. Nearly 90% are held for nonviolent offenses and cannot be tried as the legal system is swamped. 17.
Capitalism has found a new source of income in privatization of jail service. A considerable number are actually innocent of any crime. 18. About 50% are African Americans.
The sentences are class based. In 2000, a Texan got 16 years for stealing a candy bar, while executives of Hoffman-LaRoche, who were found guilty of conspiring to eliminate competition in the vitamin industry, characterized by the Justice Department as the biggest antitrust case in history, causing incalculable billions of dollars of losses to the public, were fined $75,000 to $350,000 and jail terms of three to four months. 19.
Corporations are after the Internet. AOL made a deal with Time Warner to keep the internet from competing with the media.
Thanks to Bill Clinton, we have an oligopoly of five corporations controlling 90% of international media of communications. 20. Vital decisions are made behind closed doors outside the purview of public discourse.
FCC wanted to offer diversity by means of Micro-radio, which could be used to transmit a high quality signal to large metropolitan areas. The Radio lobby went to work at the House of Representatives and got it to scotch the plan in 4/2000. 21.
NY Times May 2000, “…regulators in Clinton years have signed off on big mergers, which would have been unthinkable a generation ago”. Clinton went further than Reagan did and Bush II could. 22.
Corporate capitalism has consistently subverted the liberal tradition, leaving them with little choice between becoming openly anti-capitalist or caving in. Most of them have adopted the latter course. All the so called liberal champions, Carter, Clinton and Gore have built their careers in the service of corporations.
The law Professor Lawrence Lessig, acknowledged authority on the Internet, asserted that it was the right of people to adopt whatever system they liked the best. Since we all dislike government interventionism, we could not demand intervention in the corporate drive to internet domination. 23.
The main faction of conservatives in the U.S (and the West in general) is a proponent of the right of corporations to dominate the World without popular protest. The other is the religious establishment, which works assiduously to link evangelical Christianity to the agenda of the pro-market right. 24.
Before the 1940’s, a substantial number of conservatives were against large military, secret police and intelligence establishments. Today the topic is off limits. 25. They now comprehend the utility of the services for controlling 75% of the physical assets of the world.
Offering invaluable assistance to the capitalist society, the corporate media is indispensable to depoliticization of the society. The coverage NGOs get is just one facet of the scheme. 26.
Jean Kirkpatrick, the arch deaconess of Neo-liberalism justified the US support of brutal totalitarian societies on the ground that they protected capitalism. 27.
We are fortunately entering a new era of politicization. Students unions are being re-energized and protests are exploding. 28.
And it is not just the students who are waking up. Movements against police brutality, racist discrimination, women’s rights, environmental depredation, IMF/WTO/WB machinations on behalf of corporations and sweat shops are gathering strength. 29.
Ref:
- Telecommunication act of 1996, introduced by Larry Pressler, March 13, 1995, passed October 12, 1995, signed into law by Bill Clinton February 8, 1996 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996.
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood_debate
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media
- ibid 1
- medialifemagazine.com/ex/reporter-cbs-news-reluctant-criticize/.
- www.bostonphoenix.com/archives/features/00/05/04/DON_P_QUOTE_ME.html
- www.timesfreepress.com/news/2012/feb/25/corrupting/super/pacs/
- www.sfgate.com/news/article/Full-Text-Of-Judge-Walker-s-Ruling-2712167.php
- www.bing.
com/videos/search?q=jfk+plane+crash+treated+like+a+huge+media+event&qpvt
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Seattle_WTO_protests
- radgeek.com/gt/2010/05/13/free-market-anti-capitalism-is-this-all-just-a-semantic-debate/
- www.navalreview.ca/2014/05/federal-defence-spending-versus-federal-health-and-education-spending/
- www.holtz.org/Library/Social%20Science/Economics/Economic%20Inequality%20in%20the%20United%20States.htm
- Ibid
- money.cnn.com/2012/09/12/news/economy/median-income-poverty/index.html
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990s_United_States_boom
- www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/07/federal-prison-population-n-2638844.html
- Ibid
- www.commondreams.org/views/041100-106.htm;www.lawyersandsettlements.com/settlements/03452/vitamin.html?opt=b&utm_expid=3607522-6.CQR-xUqRR1-q6QXM51tyxA.1&utm_referrer=htpp%3A%2F%
- Ibid 1
- Ac-journal.org/journal/vol3/Iss3.rogue4/highspeed.html
- Ibid 1.
- www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2003/Lessigcopyright.html
- www.christianpost.com/news/an-anti-cronyism-and-free-market-agenda-119209/
- www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-invisible-government-revealed/
- www.ngopulse.org/category/tags/media-coverage
- En.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism
- www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer/sheet/wp/2014/04/15/testing-resistance-movement-exploding-around-country/
- www.twnside.org.sg/title/peop-cn.ht
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