if you are actually doing business with and dancing before those very people, that could prove a problem for Trump’s base.
Trumps' base either isn't paying attention or just doesn't care, so long as Trump either (a.) keeps pissing off liberals, or (b.) gives them a tax cut, or (c.) both.
Just what does the Trump Administration think it's doing by getting involved in Saudi royal family politics? Maybe Donald, Jared & Co. have been conned into believing that MbS is going to be some kind of "pillar of stability" in that part of the world. The last time the US swallowed that kind of nonsense was--wait for it--back in the 1970s. The "pillar of stability" at that time was--guess who?--the Shah of Iran. Didn't end too well, did it?
The option to renew or not renew the nuclear deal comes up again in October. Apparently it took a good deal of persuading before Trump very reluctantly agreed to renew the agreement last month. By October official Washington will probably be neck-deep in a major brouhaha over budget/debt ceiling issues. By that point it'll be apparent that Trump's mastery of these matters will about equal his familiarity with the intricacies of health care policy. In other words, he won't just be clueless, he'll look clueless. So what to do? The answer is to cook up an Iran "crisis" and the best way to do that would be to cancel the nuclear agreement.
No corrective comments, just some supplemental information which might be illuminating.
The Day of Ashura not only commemorates what Shias consider to be the martyrdom of Hussein. It also expresses remorse over the failure of most Muslims to follow him when he tried to rally opposition against the "illegitimate" Ummayads. Also, the more formal hierarchical structure of Shia Islam is based partly on the historical circumstances prevailing in Iran in recent centuries. After the end of the Savafid dynasty Iran spent most of the 18th and 19th centuries living either under very weak governments or in a state of virtual anarchy. As a result, the only law-making considered truly legitimate was in the hands of the clergy. There's nothing new about the country's religious leadership taking a hand in political matters.
BTW, I'm a non-Muslim who teaches mainly European history ("Plato to NATO"), but who also teaches a course in the Modern Middle East.
Your explorations of American literature could have revealed that other America which has never been characterized by "openness, freedom, tolerance and equality". See Twain, Melville, Hawthorne. See the 1790s-vintage Gothic fictions of Charles Brockden Brown, who virtually invented the American novel. The potential for something akin to fascism has always existed in the US; it could even be argued that the US produced one of the very first incarnations of a modern fascist movement in the post-Civil War Klu Klux Klan.
For most of the 20th century a non-replicable combination of cheap resources and successful wars could keep fascism at bay, though even here there were some close calls (McCarthyism in the 1950s, for example). Now the country has to deal with a combination of increasingly more expensive resources and increasingly less successful (and seemingly interminable) wars. Under these circumstances, the emergence of someone like Trump comes as no big surprise.
You're right about the need for "a fundamental rethink of where America is heading", but this should have happened 25 years ago. The reason why it didn't is that the collapse of the Soviet Union seemed to signal the permanent demise of anything resembling socialism (also known as "the end of history"). With socialism in any way, shape, or form apparently discredited for good, anyone who wanted to rethink where the country was going had no intellectual framework for doing so. With no socialist alternative, we were left with either creeping barbarism via neoliberal economic policies and neoconservative foreign policies, or the right-wing populist version now well over the horizon. So the necessary "rethinking" is going to have to go well beyond the question of who runs the Democratic National committee.
Good question. How exactly does one go about kicking Trump or anyone else out of a political party in the US? Pass a law barring Trump from getting on primary ballots? Make it illegal to mention Trump in newscasts? Throw him in Guantanamo until the day after Election Day? All good, provided you wind up blowing your nose in the Constitution you supposedly want to uphold.
It's not exactly been a state secret that the GOP has made a devil's bargain with the Extreme Right and that the mainstream media has been too craven to point that out. That's been pretty obvious for the past 25 years at least. What future historians will be puzzling over is why no genuine alternative emerged over the past several decades. Bernie Sanders is a pretty poor and belated substitute for an alternative, even if his heart is in the right place.
When you consider the sort of reality they have to adapt to the anger is thoroughly understandable.
It speaks volumes for the state of progressive/leftist activism in this country that they are unapproachable by the very same people who might conceivably help them out.
On the other hand, taking one look at the kid's homemade clock and concluding that it's a bomb shows admirable judgement on the part of the local educators.
Of course if you're a public school official in Texas you have to be looking over your shoulder constantly for a paranoid wingnut backlash over evolution, sex ed, slavery as a cause of the Civil War, heliocentrism, etc.. Giving Ahmed a hard time was probably a case of the school practicing CYA (Cover Yer Ass).
Actually, there was nothing particularly isolationist about the Confederacy. For one thing, Southerners were acutely aware of their economic dependence on overseas markets for cotton. In fact, the Confederacy's overriding foreign policy goal was to gain diplomatic recognition from the chief importers of Southern cotton, Britain & France. In addition, the slaveholding South was quite imperialistic when it came to the Western Hemisphere, seeing Cuba and Central America as future venues for an expanded slave-based economy.
What you refer to as religious Zionism is in fact the basis for a very secular political movement that goes back to the 1930s: Revisionist Zionism. Ze'ev Jabotinsky--the founder of the movement--articulated the goals that right-wing Israelis have pursued ever since: an Arab-free Greater Israel. The Likud is simply the current embodiment of Revisionist Zionism.
Zionism did indeed reflect 19th century nationalism in a lot of respects, but it was also a response to one aspect of it, namely the pseudo-scientific racial theorizing which rejected any notion of Jewish assimilation. Too bad that Revisionist Zionism--of which Bibi's Likud is the latest incarnation--has virtually mirror-imaged that very same racism which emerged in Central and Eastern Europe a century and a half ago.
What's holding the Israelis back is the lack of a plausible pretext, but continuing to provoke and victimize the Palestinians will eventually produce one. Some of those primitive bloodthirsty Arabs (irony alert) will pull something sufficiently horrible to "justify" a massive population transfer on the part of the noble Israelis defending their homeland (cue soundtrack from the movie "Exodus").
War with Iran isn't a bug, it's a feature!
At least the incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee seems to think so. link to politicalhumor.about.com
What this country needs even more than a good five cent cigar is a presidential candidate who will repeat the above statement verbatim on national television.
The level of ignorance at most mainstream media organizations is now so high that I doubt whoever put the segment together knew what they were looking at.
There's no reason to believe that this sort of tit-for-tat can't go on forever. The Israelis obviously aren't about to give up policies which will continually goad, prod, and provoke Palestinians to acts of violence which in turn will encourage/enable the Israelis to maintain the policies which will continually goad, prod, and provoke the Palestinians to acts of violence. The violence distracts public opinion in Israel and elsewhere (meaning the US of A) from the nature of those (colonialist) policies and its convenient for the parties in power as well.
"It’s a tragedy."
Don't think Sophocles would agree.
Inappropriate use of the word "tragedy" is a tell, signifying that the person using it doesn't really care all that much about what happened. Apparently Joe the Plumber thinks that regulating possession and use of firearms as closely as we regulate the possession and use of, say, automobiles is something more heinous than what happened at UCSB.
I think they were well aware of the possibility. In fact, the whole point of destabilizing Ukraine may have to drive a wedge between the US and Russia and trash any joint effort to work out a deal with Iran on the nuclear issue. I've been convinced for some time now that the neocons are simply not rational when it comes to Iran (never mind Israel) and still want to "march on Teheran" like in the good old days (2003). Since Rouhani's election last year there's been a distinct danger that US-Iranian relations might actually improve. This has to be stopped at all costs.
Arthur Kennedy did his usual top-notch supporting actor's job playing the fictionalized version of Thomas.
Thomas got the biggest journalistic scoop of that era, one that made his career.
Lawrence got a lot of notoriety which he spent the rest of his life trying to live down.
In the media's case, it's just plain fear of getting screamed at by rabid righties. I used to work for local radio and TV stations in the Washington area, and I can testify that it's no picnic to have some meatheads hollering nasty and brutish abuse at you over the phone every day. Not pleasant. After years if not decades of putting up with that sort of thing a half-conscious kind of self-censorship sets in; you want to not go to certain places because doing so will light up the station's switchboard with the nut cases. Reporting on the LAX shooter's far right-wing fantasies is precisely the sort of story that sets them off.
Hope you're not being overly-optimistic about the Hawkerdammerung. Fact is, the Likud-AIPAC-Neocon Axis of Weevils can see perfectly well what's unfolding here and are understandably terrified that the Middle East Crisis Racket is about to collapse. So look for any sort of desperate measures to sabotage an outbreak of peace, from false-flag operations to downright assassination.
The League of Nations didn't fail because the Italians gassed Abyssinians, but because the nations that "imposed" economic sanctions on Italy under League auspices were in fact cheating on their own sanctions. The Brits and French never had their hearts in sanctions anyway, partly because neither government had any real issues with Mussolini's regime, partly because there was still a chance Mussolini could be kept from joining up with Hitler. But there was an outraged public opinion to worry about and both Britain and France were facing national elections, so the politicians had to go through the motions of "punishing" Italy even if it meant making the League of Nations look silly and ineffectual.
Ho hum.
I'm not sure that a "fuel surfeit" hampered US aerial reconaissance or cause more US to remain at anchor at Pearl Harbor. According to Roberta Wohlstetter's study the recon problem was due to interservice squabbling over whether the Navy or the Army Air Force was responsible for long-distance patrolling. As for all those battleships tied up in port, there was no other place for them under the circumstances. They were overaged obsolescent ships, fuel-hogging and far too slow to keep up with the carriers, which BTW were not tied up in port on December 7th.
It's a good argument for turning Egypt's presidency into a symbolic Head of State position with actual governmental leadership exercised by a Prime Minister and Cabinet directly dependent on a working majority in Parliament. Under a parliamentary system an unpopular failed government could be brought down by a no-confidence vote without military intervention.
The Nusayris or Alawis are folk Shiites who are not viewed as Shiites or even Muslims by many of the Twelver Shiites of Lebanon, Iraq and Iran.
Assume I'm semi-literate about Islam (which is not far from the truth). What is meant by "folk Shiites" and how are they different from non-folk Shiites?
Anyone who dresses the way Ahmadinejad does must be some sort of existential threat. Of course I always thought an existential threat was a threat with a Gauloise hanging out of the corner of its mouth.
If Israel does bomb, how else can Iran retaliate except against US forces in the region? If that happens--Iranian antiship missiles hitting US warships in or around the Persian Gulf--the US would have to respond militarily.
So the Israelis entangle the US in a war which they can let the US fight.
@Cherish
"I have come to find, and correct me if I’m wrong, that our founders wrote the beloved constitution without a single mention of slavery."
Well, you are wrong. Very much so, as a matter of fact. You might want to read through the following from Article I:
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.
You might also be interested in this little tidbit from Article IV:
No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, But shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.
You might want to get all cutesy at this point say that the word "slavery" isn't mentioned in either passage. But the Framers knew what they were doing, which was to deal with slavery-related issues in a way that could also ensure ratification of their proposed constitution. Not all of them approved of slavery by any means, but it never occurred to any of them to deny its existence. They were far more connected to reality than some bubbleheads in contemporary America that come to mind.
© 2026 All Rights Reserved
if you are actually doing business with and dancing before those very people, that could prove a problem for Trump’s base.
Trumps' base either isn't paying attention or just doesn't care, so long as Trump either (a.) keeps pissing off liberals, or (b.) gives them a tax cut, or (c.) both.
Just what does the Trump Administration think it's doing by getting involved in Saudi royal family politics? Maybe Donald, Jared & Co. have been conned into believing that MbS is going to be some kind of "pillar of stability" in that part of the world. The last time the US swallowed that kind of nonsense was--wait for it--back in the 1970s. The "pillar of stability" at that time was--guess who?--the Shah of Iran. Didn't end too well, did it?
The option to renew or not renew the nuclear deal comes up again in October. Apparently it took a good deal of persuading before Trump very reluctantly agreed to renew the agreement last month. By October official Washington will probably be neck-deep in a major brouhaha over budget/debt ceiling issues. By that point it'll be apparent that Trump's mastery of these matters will about equal his familiarity with the intricacies of health care policy. In other words, he won't just be clueless, he'll look clueless. So what to do? The answer is to cook up an Iran "crisis" and the best way to do that would be to cancel the nuclear agreement.
No corrective comments, just some supplemental information which might be illuminating.
The Day of Ashura not only commemorates what Shias consider to be the martyrdom of Hussein. It also expresses remorse over the failure of most Muslims to follow him when he tried to rally opposition against the "illegitimate" Ummayads. Also, the more formal hierarchical structure of Shia Islam is based partly on the historical circumstances prevailing in Iran in recent centuries. After the end of the Savafid dynasty Iran spent most of the 18th and 19th centuries living either under very weak governments or in a state of virtual anarchy. As a result, the only law-making considered truly legitimate was in the hands of the clergy. There's nothing new about the country's religious leadership taking a hand in political matters.
BTW, I'm a non-Muslim who teaches mainly European history ("Plato to NATO"), but who also teaches a course in the Modern Middle East.
Your explorations of American literature could have revealed that other America which has never been characterized by "openness, freedom, tolerance and equality". See Twain, Melville, Hawthorne. See the 1790s-vintage Gothic fictions of Charles Brockden Brown, who virtually invented the American novel. The potential for something akin to fascism has always existed in the US; it could even be argued that the US produced one of the very first incarnations of a modern fascist movement in the post-Civil War Klu Klux Klan.
For most of the 20th century a non-replicable combination of cheap resources and successful wars could keep fascism at bay, though even here there were some close calls (McCarthyism in the 1950s, for example). Now the country has to deal with a combination of increasingly more expensive resources and increasingly less successful (and seemingly interminable) wars. Under these circumstances, the emergence of someone like Trump comes as no big surprise.
You're right about the need for "a fundamental rethink of where America is heading", but this should have happened 25 years ago. The reason why it didn't is that the collapse of the Soviet Union seemed to signal the permanent demise of anything resembling socialism (also known as "the end of history"). With socialism in any way, shape, or form apparently discredited for good, anyone who wanted to rethink where the country was going had no intellectual framework for doing so. With no socialist alternative, we were left with either creeping barbarism via neoliberal economic policies and neoconservative foreign policies, or the right-wing populist version now well over the horizon. So the necessary "rethinking" is going to have to go well beyond the question of who runs the Democratic National committee.
Maybe we should build a yuuuuge wall around the Middle East.
Nothing they won't do for grant money!
/s
As Rod Steiger (Charlie Malloy) puts it in On the Waterfront, "if we can get it we're entitled to it".
Good question. How exactly does one go about kicking Trump or anyone else out of a political party in the US? Pass a law barring Trump from getting on primary ballots? Make it illegal to mention Trump in newscasts? Throw him in Guantanamo until the day after Election Day? All good, provided you wind up blowing your nose in the Constitution you supposedly want to uphold.
It's not exactly been a state secret that the GOP has made a devil's bargain with the Extreme Right and that the mainstream media has been too craven to point that out. That's been pretty obvious for the past 25 years at least. What future historians will be puzzling over is why no genuine alternative emerged over the past several decades. Bernie Sanders is a pretty poor and belated substitute for an alternative, even if his heart is in the right place.
Like it or not, Trump is turning into a Middle East issue.
When you consider the sort of reality they have to adapt to the anger is thoroughly understandable.
It speaks volumes for the state of progressive/leftist activism in this country that they are unapproachable by the very same people who might conceivably help them out.
On the other hand, taking one look at the kid's homemade clock and concluding that it's a bomb shows admirable judgement on the part of the local educators.
Of course if you're a public school official in Texas you have to be looking over your shoulder constantly for a paranoid wingnut backlash over evolution, sex ed, slavery as a cause of the Civil War, heliocentrism, etc.. Giving Ahmed a hard time was probably a case of the school practicing CYA (Cover Yer Ass).
Hey Huckleberry! They don't call it the Soviet Union any more. It's been "Russia" for nearly the past 25 years.
Derp.
When you've got Master Strategist Paul Wolfowitz advising you, anything is possible!
Actually, there was nothing particularly isolationist about the Confederacy. For one thing, Southerners were acutely aware of their economic dependence on overseas markets for cotton. In fact, the Confederacy's overriding foreign policy goal was to gain diplomatic recognition from the chief importers of Southern cotton, Britain & France. In addition, the slaveholding South was quite imperialistic when it came to the Western Hemisphere, seeing Cuba and Central America as future venues for an expanded slave-based economy.
For-profit gulags?
They don't call it Versailles On The Potomac for nothing.
What you refer to as religious Zionism is in fact the basis for a very secular political movement that goes back to the 1930s: Revisionist Zionism. Ze'ev Jabotinsky--the founder of the movement--articulated the goals that right-wing Israelis have pursued ever since: an Arab-free Greater Israel. The Likud is simply the current embodiment of Revisionist Zionism.
Zionism did indeed reflect 19th century nationalism in a lot of respects, but it was also a response to one aspect of it, namely the pseudo-scientific racial theorizing which rejected any notion of Jewish assimilation. Too bad that Revisionist Zionism--of which Bibi's Likud is the latest incarnation--has virtually mirror-imaged that very same racism which emerged in Central and Eastern Europe a century and a half ago.
What's holding the Israelis back is the lack of a plausible pretext, but continuing to provoke and victimize the Palestinians will eventually produce one. Some of those primitive bloodthirsty Arabs (irony alert) will pull something sufficiently horrible to "justify" a massive population transfer on the part of the noble Israelis defending their homeland (cue soundtrack from the movie "Exodus").
War with Iran isn't a bug, it's a feature!
At least the incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee seems to think so.
link to politicalhumor.about.com
"War is the health of the state." -- Randolph Bourne
The journalists don't ask questions largely because most of them know as much about the Middle East as she does: Zip.
Get out of the Middle East. Consume less oil.
Is it really all that hard to figure out?
What this country needs even more than a good five cent cigar is a presidential candidate who will repeat the above statement verbatim on national television.
The level of ignorance at most mainstream media organizations is now so high that I doubt whoever put the segment together knew what they were looking at.
There's no reason to believe that this sort of tit-for-tat can't go on forever. The Israelis obviously aren't about to give up policies which will continually goad, prod, and provoke Palestinians to acts of violence which in turn will encourage/enable the Israelis to maintain the policies which will continually goad, prod, and provoke the Palestinians to acts of violence. The violence distracts public opinion in Israel and elsewhere (meaning the US of A) from the nature of those (colonialist) policies and its convenient for the parties in power as well.
I do teach a Modern Middle East history course and Juan's blog will be one of those on the syllabus.
"If we back the brownshirts that'll make the moderate Right seem respectable by comparison."
Oops! Heh, sorry about that...
"It’s a tragedy."
Don't think Sophocles would agree.
Inappropriate use of the word "tragedy" is a tell, signifying that the person using it doesn't really care all that much about what happened. Apparently Joe the Plumber thinks that regulating possession and use of firearms as closely as we regulate the possession and use of, say, automobiles is something more heinous than what happened at UCSB.
I think they were well aware of the possibility. In fact, the whole point of destabilizing Ukraine may have to drive a wedge between the US and Russia and trash any joint effort to work out a deal with Iran on the nuclear issue. I've been convinced for some time now that the neocons are simply not rational when it comes to Iran (never mind Israel) and still want to "march on Teheran" like in the good old days (2003). Since Rouhani's election last year there's been a distinct danger that US-Iranian relations might actually improve. This has to be stopped at all costs.
Because in the latter case serious mental effort isn't required.
Arthur Kennedy did his usual top-notch supporting actor's job playing the fictionalized version of Thomas.
Thomas got the biggest journalistic scoop of that era, one that made his career.
Lawrence got a lot of notoriety which he spent the rest of his life trying to live down.
Look for some sort of provocative "incident" in the near future.
In the media's case, it's just plain fear of getting screamed at by rabid righties. I used to work for local radio and TV stations in the Washington area, and I can testify that it's no picnic to have some meatheads hollering nasty and brutish abuse at you over the phone every day. Not pleasant. After years if not decades of putting up with that sort of thing a half-conscious kind of self-censorship sets in; you want to not go to certain places because doing so will light up the station's switchboard with the nut cases. Reporting on the LAX shooter's far right-wing fantasies is precisely the sort of story that sets them off.
I guess if we go on loathing the study of politics and history long enough, things will somehow get better.
Hope you're not being overly-optimistic about the Hawkerdammerung. Fact is, the Likud-AIPAC-Neocon Axis of Weevils can see perfectly well what's unfolding here and are understandably terrified that the Middle East Crisis Racket is about to collapse. So look for any sort of desperate measures to sabotage an outbreak of peace, from false-flag operations to downright assassination.
Who's Sparta, BTW?
The League of Nations didn't fail because the Italians gassed Abyssinians, but because the nations that "imposed" economic sanctions on Italy under League auspices were in fact cheating on their own sanctions. The Brits and French never had their hearts in sanctions anyway, partly because neither government had any real issues with Mussolini's regime, partly because there was still a chance Mussolini could be kept from joining up with Hitler. But there was an outraged public opinion to worry about and both Britain and France were facing national elections, so the politicians had to go through the motions of "punishing" Italy even if it meant making the League of Nations look silly and ineffectual.
Ho hum.
I'm not sure that a "fuel surfeit" hampered US aerial reconaissance or cause more US to remain at anchor at Pearl Harbor. According to Roberta Wohlstetter's study the recon problem was due to interservice squabbling over whether the Navy or the Army Air Force was responsible for long-distance patrolling. As for all those battleships tied up in port, there was no other place for them under the circumstances. They were overaged obsolescent ships, fuel-hogging and far too slow to keep up with the carriers, which BTW were not tied up in port on December 7th.
It's a good argument for turning Egypt's presidency into a symbolic Head of State position with actual governmental leadership exercised by a Prime Minister and Cabinet directly dependent on a working majority in Parliament. Under a parliamentary system an unpopular failed government could be brought down by a no-confidence vote without military intervention.
The Nusayris or Alawis are folk Shiites who are not viewed as Shiites or even Muslims by many of the Twelver Shiites of Lebanon, Iraq and Iran.
Assume I'm semi-literate about Islam (which is not far from the truth). What is meant by "folk Shiites" and how are they different from non-folk Shiites?
I guess Real Men still want to march on Tehran.
Or at least sing that real cool song about it based on that 1961 hit tune by The Regents.
Anyone who dresses the way Ahmadinejad does must be some sort of existential threat. Of course I always thought an existential threat was a threat with a Gauloise hanging out of the corner of its mouth.
"At 1:51 into this interview David Stockman advises Pres.Obama on how to bring down oil prices."
Lends credence to the notion that all the huffing & puffing over Iran is basically a speculative gimmick.
If Israel does bomb, how else can Iran retaliate except against US forces in the region? If that happens--Iranian antiship missiles hitting US warships in or around the Persian Gulf--the US would have to respond militarily.
So the Israelis entangle the US in a war which they can let the US fight.
@Cherish
"I have come to find, and correct me if I’m wrong, that our founders wrote the beloved constitution without a single mention of slavery."
Well, you are wrong. Very much so, as a matter of fact. You might want to read through the following from Article I:
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.
You might also be interested in this little tidbit from Article IV:
No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, But shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.
You might want to get all cutesy at this point say that the word "slavery" isn't mentioned in either passage. But the Framers knew what they were doing, which was to deal with slavery-related issues in a way that could also ensure ratification of their proposed constitution. Not all of them approved of slavery by any means, but it never occurred to any of them to deny its existence. They were far more connected to reality than some bubbleheads in contemporary America that come to mind.
What would Prof Zewail think of a Constituent Assembly that would function both as a national legislature and as a constitutional convention?