For the time being I care more about undermining the reactionary plot in Washington and NATO to foment a new cold war with its very likely inevitable endpoint of a nuclear confrontation and very hot war. Russia is not Iraq and other non-nuclear third world states in the Middle East and elsewhere. And behind Russia would likely be China. Let their be entente - peace firmly realized at least, and at long last, in all of Europe before we may have to impeach this man! My guess is that even then impeachment would only be an attempt that would backfire on the Democrats and even the current growing progressive movement as the impeachment of Bill Clinton did on the GOP and their "contract for/on America". Bernie Sanders' declared intention and advice to progressives is the right course, not to be wildly obstructionist but to work with the new president in areas of agreement. 2020 will be the better time to get rid of Trump if he fails to "make America great again" as greatly as he keeps boasting.
When all is said and done, Donald Trump in the White House is not going to be the threat of war as it would have been with Hillary, an outright militarist. And as cause of more sexual scandal with Bill right back there at her side. And there's the huge and disgusting financial scandal concerning charity fraud brewing over their Foundation!
I ask: Ought it been better not to have permitted Qadhafi's fall to begin with?
It seems the West, or rather the ideological and economic interests and cabals influencing or controlling our governments, particularly in America and Britain, and France, madly connived in that. And all this that has followed - so irresponsibly, even criminally. Like in Iraq and now Syria.
It seems there must have been cities in China larger than Cordoba. Major ones were a million+ in her history ancient to modern.
What is the historic research you have on this globally I wonder?
I doubt that but we can construe it so for the desired vision here.
Whitman always considered Canada (or "Kanada" as he oddly spelled it throughout Leaves of Grass) as part of a greater American nation. That's implied in various poems such as "By Blue Ontario's Shore" for instance, or explicitly in prose works of his.
He envisioned and expected Canada eventually to furnish several new states to the Union. But beyond that nationalistic vision, he also had a transcendental one: a union (put in erotic terms as a marriage, spiritual anyway) of all humanity in every land and continent, all nations, races, cultures and religions. America the great republic - DEMOCRACY, a nation of nations, would be the forerunner and exemplar.
Once upon a time we would never have expected white Western Christian Europe to resemble America as a destination of masses of ethnically and religiously diverse people from across the seas seeking opportunity, refuge and freedom. There seems to be some special karma or irony involved in Europe's case: the former colonizers being colonized. Fortunately many of the traditionally native inhabitants, not least the young generation (as I find here too), seem to want to solve the resulting problems of assimilation humanely, and democratically, understanding that the world is a very small world now, the West responsible for it's ever happening. I will add, however, I expect that America will continue to lead the world, as we become the premier "majority minority nation". Also I'll add something I heard said by an elderly Chinese dissident in Beijing: that China would not be the future and lead the world, because nobody really wants to immigrate there. Of course China already has too many people to offer opportunity to millions of foreigners, and not the freedom and democracy they might be seeking as much as anything else. Freedom and democracy are among the most important thing to offer to others; I trust we can preserve it for ourselves to be able to offer others. (Gee, you and Walt Whitman got me thinking away East and West/North and South like this!)
It's not clear what "east" and "west" is being referred to here? It could seem solely within North America - i.e. Anglo America! A better poem to site might be one of his major if not greatest productions, Passage to India. Maybe canto 5, beginning "O vast rondure swimming in space ..." Other cantos or parts of as well, e.g. canto 2: "Passage to India!/Lo soul, thou not God's purpose from the first?/The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage,/The oceans to be crossed, the distant brought near,/The lands to be welded together."). Whitman is using "India", as in the old usage, "the Indies", a term for the East /Orient.
By the way, I think Whitman rightly identifies the modern Western discovery, exploration, and conquest of the world of the past 500+years to be potent of more dynamic and positive consequences and promise than just what we may be thinking in external and negative materialistic and imperialistic terms. Canto 5 ends: "...All these hearts as of fretted children shall be soothed,/All affection shall be fully responded to, the secret shall be told,/All these separations and gaps shall be taken up and hook'd and link'd together,/The whole earth, this cold, impassive, voiceless earth, shall be completely justified,/...Nature and Man shall be disjoin'd and diffused no more, ..." ...and on and on and on as only old Walt can go!
The article gives a misleading impression when it says Sanders defended Israel's bombing of Gaza. The protesters were disruptive and prevented him from replying clearly. What he managed to say was: That the situation was a two-sided problem, a "complicated" one, especially if Hamas was going to send missiles across the border into Israel. But also that the Israelis overreacted - and that how they did so "was very very bad."
My impression of Sanders is, that like most American Jews I know who are progressive, secular and internationalist, he is embarrassed and even disgusted over what Israel has become to the world increasingly since its founding, above all concerning the treatment of the Palestinians; nonetheless Jews here who cannot help but care for Israel, wishing (perhaps fooling themselves) for a solution that will allow both Jews and Arabs to live peaceably at long last in their own national states. Such a solution, however, is only going to have a chance when Israel is no longer run by extremists! My guess is that a Pres. Sanders would probably be more confidently confrontational and uncooperative with the Netanyahu government than Pres. Obama or Mrs. Clinton, as well as have more influence over Israelis because he is a Jew. He would certainly understand that any possible two-state solution is going to have to be two secularly oriented ones respecting religious and ethnic minorities. My hope as one who is neither a Jew or Arab is that, possibly one day, Israelis and Palestinians can recognize a cause for unity in recognizing their little corner of the world in historical terms, and allowing it again to be "the Holy Land", a home for some, a destination for others, of religion, pilgrimage and ancient world heritage.
Even if one parent is (such as the President's mother), not merely the male parent as a century ago, since women were accorded equal rights in this connection, if I recall aright, 3 years after they won the right to vote here in 1920. It used to be a woman lost her American nationality and acquired her foreign husband's the moment she said, "I do." But how unfair and biased people can be about what makes a person American generally!
25% of the Founding Fathers and many other men in the Continental service on land and sea were born abroad, though they had the obvious right to fully unqualified citizenship from their allegiance to the country from its birth and winning of independence, and could've been president or VP, though I can think only of Hamilton who would have had aspirations in that direction.
Instead of "1789" there, I think you meant 1800 when Jefferson was elected president, an event termed "the second American revolution" when much of the antidemocratic influences on the creation of the federal constitutional republic were decisively counteracted through the defeat of the overbearing and overstepping Federalist Party of the Adams administration. However, I would not call those Federalist 18th Century Enlightenment gentlemen, certainly not Adams, or Hamilton, "robber barons". Elitist would-be aristocrats and class snobs, yes. With Andrew Jackson (1828) America begins to deal with the problem of bona fide robber barons as banking and industrial corporations begin to be a pressing concern of democratic aspirations in our history.
For the time being I care more about undermining the reactionary plot in Washington and NATO to foment a new cold war with its very likely inevitable endpoint of a nuclear confrontation and very hot war. Russia is not Iraq and other non-nuclear third world states in the Middle East and elsewhere. And behind Russia would likely be China. Let their be entente - peace firmly realized at least, and at long last, in all of Europe before we may have to impeach this man! My guess is that even then impeachment would only be an attempt that would backfire on the Democrats and even the current growing progressive movement as the impeachment of Bill Clinton did on the GOP and their "contract for/on America". Bernie Sanders' declared intention and advice to progressives is the right course, not to be wildly obstructionist but to work with the new president in areas of agreement. 2020 will be the better time to get rid of Trump if he fails to "make America great again" as greatly as he keeps boasting.
When all is said and done, Donald Trump in the White House is not going to be the threat of war as it would have been with Hillary, an outright militarist. And as cause of more sexual scandal with Bill right back there at her side. And there's the huge and disgusting financial scandal concerning charity fraud brewing over their Foundation!
I ask: Ought it been better not to have permitted Qadhafi's fall to begin with?
It seems the West, or rather the ideological and economic interests and cabals influencing or controlling our governments, particularly in America and Britain, and France, madly connived in that. And all this that has followed - so irresponsibly, even criminally. Like in Iraq and now Syria.
It seems there must have been cities in China larger than Cordoba. Major ones were a million+ in her history ancient to modern.
What is the historic research you have on this globally I wonder?
I doubt that but we can construe it so for the desired vision here.
Whitman always considered Canada (or "Kanada" as he oddly spelled it throughout Leaves of Grass) as part of a greater American nation. That's implied in various poems such as "By Blue Ontario's Shore" for instance, or explicitly in prose works of his.
He envisioned and expected Canada eventually to furnish several new states to the Union. But beyond that nationalistic vision, he also had a transcendental one: a union (put in erotic terms as a marriage, spiritual anyway) of all humanity in every land and continent, all nations, races, cultures and religions. America the great republic - DEMOCRACY, a nation of nations, would be the forerunner and exemplar.
Once upon a time we would never have expected white Western Christian Europe to resemble America as a destination of masses of ethnically and religiously diverse people from across the seas seeking opportunity, refuge and freedom. There seems to be some special karma or irony involved in Europe's case: the former colonizers being colonized. Fortunately many of the traditionally native inhabitants, not least the young generation (as I find here too), seem to want to solve the resulting problems of assimilation humanely, and democratically, understanding that the world is a very small world now, the West responsible for it's ever happening. I will add, however, I expect that America will continue to lead the world, as we become the premier "majority minority nation". Also I'll add something I heard said by an elderly Chinese dissident in Beijing: that China would not be the future and lead the world, because nobody really wants to immigrate there. Of course China already has too many people to offer opportunity to millions of foreigners, and not the freedom and democracy they might be seeking as much as anything else. Freedom and democracy are among the most important thing to offer to others; I trust we can preserve it for ourselves to be able to offer others. (Gee, you and Walt Whitman got me thinking away East and West/North and South like this!)
It's not clear what "east" and "west" is being referred to here? It could seem solely within North America - i.e. Anglo America! A better poem to site might be one of his major if not greatest productions, Passage to India. Maybe canto 5, beginning "O vast rondure swimming in space ..." Other cantos or parts of as well, e.g. canto 2: "Passage to India!/Lo soul, thou not God's purpose from the first?/The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage,/The oceans to be crossed, the distant brought near,/The lands to be welded together."). Whitman is using "India", as in the old usage, "the Indies", a term for the East /Orient.
By the way, I think Whitman rightly identifies the modern Western discovery, exploration, and conquest of the world of the past 500+years to be potent of more dynamic and positive consequences and promise than just what we may be thinking in external and negative materialistic and imperialistic terms. Canto 5 ends: "...All these hearts as of fretted children shall be soothed,/All affection shall be fully responded to, the secret shall be told,/All these separations and gaps shall be taken up and hook'd and link'd together,/The whole earth, this cold, impassive, voiceless earth, shall be completely justified,/...Nature and Man shall be disjoin'd and diffused no more, ..." ...and on and on and on as only old Walt can go!
The article gives a misleading impression when it says Sanders defended Israel's bombing of Gaza. The protesters were disruptive and prevented him from replying clearly. What he managed to say was: That the situation was a two-sided problem, a "complicated" one, especially if Hamas was going to send missiles across the border into Israel. But also that the Israelis overreacted - and that how they did so "was very very bad."
My impression of Sanders is, that like most American Jews I know who are progressive, secular and internationalist, he is embarrassed and even disgusted over what Israel has become to the world increasingly since its founding, above all concerning the treatment of the Palestinians; nonetheless Jews here who cannot help but care for Israel, wishing (perhaps fooling themselves) for a solution that will allow both Jews and Arabs to live peaceably at long last in their own national states. Such a solution, however, is only going to have a chance when Israel is no longer run by extremists! My guess is that a Pres. Sanders would probably be more confidently confrontational and uncooperative with the Netanyahu government than Pres. Obama or Mrs. Clinton, as well as have more influence over Israelis because he is a Jew. He would certainly understand that any possible two-state solution is going to have to be two secularly oriented ones respecting religious and ethnic minorities. My hope as one who is neither a Jew or Arab is that, possibly one day, Israelis and Palestinians can recognize a cause for unity in recognizing their little corner of the world in historical terms, and allowing it again to be "the Holy Land", a home for some, a destination for others, of religion, pilgrimage and ancient world heritage.
Even if one parent is (such as the President's mother), not merely the male parent as a century ago, since women were accorded equal rights in this connection, if I recall aright, 3 years after they won the right to vote here in 1920. It used to be a woman lost her American nationality and acquired her foreign husband's the moment she said, "I do." But how unfair and biased people can be about what makes a person American generally!
25% of the Founding Fathers and many other men in the Continental service on land and sea were born abroad, though they had the obvious right to fully unqualified citizenship from their allegiance to the country from its birth and winning of independence, and could've been president or VP, though I can think only of Hamilton who would have had aspirations in that direction.
Instead of "1789" there, I think you meant 1800 when Jefferson was elected president, an event termed "the second American revolution" when much of the antidemocratic influences on the creation of the federal constitutional republic were decisively counteracted through the defeat of the overbearing and overstepping Federalist Party of the Adams administration. However, I would not call those Federalist 18th Century Enlightenment gentlemen, certainly not Adams, or Hamilton, "robber barons". Elitist would-be aristocrats and class snobs, yes. With Andrew Jackson (1828) America begins to deal with the problem of bona fide robber barons as banking and industrial corporations begin to be a pressing concern of democratic aspirations in our history.