Some Memes, And A Broken Glass

Roadside sign spotted in Maine's 2nd congressional district yesterday

Last time Donald Trump won the presidency I was so rattled that I threw my laptop across the room. Not on purpose, I just forgot to zip that compartment of my backpack and inadvertently launched it when I swung the pack onto my back to head out to school.

I'm retired now and we go to bed early around here. The 8pm robo call on election eve from what our answering machine described as "Donald G Tromp" rattled my husband and as I went to silence it I heard his water glass shatter in the living room. I knew the caller was not in Maine, because in my neck of the woods we do not call each other at that time of night, where a late call indicates an emergency.

U.S. national politics are an emergency, but there isn't anything you're going to do about it at the ballot box.

I figured that Trump would carry the 2nd congressional district where I live -- it is covered with strategic yard signs like: TRUMP SAFETY-- KAMALA CRIME; it has gone for Trump every time he's on the ballot (delivering a whopping one electoral vote); and our polling place was so full the clerk had to squeeze me into a makeshift voting booth.

My sister was convinced that reproductive rights were the #1 concern of voters while I remain convinced that the Biden-Harris administration's full throttle conduct of the U.S.-Israel genocide in Gaza was top of mind. What that mostly reflects is where we source our information, and we're probably both a little bit right, but it's murky: Democrats have failed to codify Roe v. Wade every chance they get, and Trump promised to be even more pro-Israel than VP Harris.

People I know in the pro-Palestinian movement debated whether the admonition to elect a Democrat because they are "easier to organize under" was misguided or a bold canard. As an old antiwar protester I can assure you that millions of people who come out into the streets against a Republican war will go back to eating brunch during a Democratic war.

https://x.com/sbg1/status/1854116340337881252

I hate to say I told you so, but I've been predicting for months that the liberal media's obsession with Trump (New Yorker piece above is typical) indicated that we would be getting him again. Elections are mostly about name recognition. Whose name is never out of the headlines? And who ever even heard of Kamala Harris before the Democratic Party undemocratically selected her as VP and then their presidential nominee?

So I am returning to my old ways -- I will no longer be helping the narcissist in chief build his brand and its value. I used to refer to him as "45" but henceforth he shall be known in these pages as "47".

Now back to organizing against U.S.-Israel and the imperial wars that never end. Never stopped under Bush Jr., Obama, 45, Biden -- and won't stop under 47 either.

See you in the streets.

Who Will Be Figurehead Of This Doomed Empire?

So the October surprise turned out to be major newspapers failing to endorse the current administration's candidate, albeit for different reasons.

Most significant: the Los Angeles Times, a paper long in the grip of the Zionist lobby -- which is huge and particularly powerful in southern California (see UCLA and USC actions against student protesters for evidence) -- declined due to the influence of the 31 year old daughter of its new owner. Nika Soon-Shiong explained:

As a citizen of a country openly financing genocide, and as a family that experienced South African apartheid, the endorsement was an opportunity to repudiate justifications for the widespread targeting of journalists and ongoing war on children.

The Gannett newspaper chain, largest in the U.S. and including flagship publication USA Today, also will not endorse a candidate this year, giving no real reason other than a vague assurance that the decision was made a year ago. Washington Post owner, oligarch Jeff Bezos, published an op-ed explaining that in a close election some see as a referendum on the U.S.-Israel genocide, he is hedging his bets.

Glenn Greenwald commented:

To say that liberal elites were enraged by this news and have gotten into a spiraling meltdown of hysteria and betrayal is to understate the case. Some of these journalists and editors actually resigned in protest, including one of the longest-time and most influential neocons, Robert Kagan, who resigned today from The Washington Post. 

Kagan is the husband of Victoria Nuland, architect of the destruction of Ukraine. Perfect guy to have on your editorial board to pump up the jam for that particular disastrous imperial war.

Is it any wonder that a Gallup poll this month found corporate media have sunk even lower in the public's esteem than Congress?

The part that gets overlooked deliberately by nearly all corporate media: the U.S.-Israel empire is foundering, and a popularity contest for figurehead of the sinking ship is largely irrelevant.

We are nearing the end times. As British journalist Jonathan Cook observed:

Every empire falls. Its collapse becomes inevitable once its rulers lose all sense of how absurd and abhorrent they have become.

Along these lines, here's some of what I've been reading this week that's worth considering.

For starters, I think these two articles belong together:

"Trump's Madison Square Garden event turns into a rally with crude and racist insults" (Associated Press, October 27)

"Collapsing Empire: China and Russia checkmate US Military" (Kit Klarenberg's substack Global Delinquents, October 29)

Here, I got a kick out of Aussie blogger Caitlin Johnstone riffing on the poor quality of our candidates in these declining days of empire:

Iranian cleric Shahab Moradi after the US assassinated Iran’s immensely popular general Qassem Soleimani in 2020 complained that Iran can’t even really retaliate for the assassination because the US doesn’t have any real heroes of its own. 

“Think about it. Are we supposed to take out Spider-Man and SpongeBob?”

But we're laughing through our tears as the dying beast destroys many lives on its way down to perdition.

A useful analysis of this election is from Chris Hedges:

The choice this election is between Corporate and Oligarchic Power

There is a civil war within capitalism. Kamala Harris is the face of corporate power. Donald Trump is the mascot of the oligarchs. Either way, we lose.

This answers the oft asked question, if both corporate parties answer to the same donors and pursue the same genocidal policies while competing to be the most pro-Israel, what's a voter to do? Something like 40% of eligible voters declined to participate last time around.

Hedges, who has already voted for pro-Palestine Greens Stein and Ware, as I will do on Tuesday: 

Corporate power needs stability and a technocratic government. Oligarchic power thrives on chaos and, as Steve Bannon says, the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” Neither are democratic. They have each bought up the political class, the academy and the press. 

Both are forms of exploitation that impoverish and disempower the public. Both funnel money upwards into the hands of the billionaire class. 

Both dismantle regulations, destroy labor unions, gut government services in the name of austerity, privatize every aspect of American society, from utilities to schools, perpetuate permanent wars, including the genocide in Gaza, and neuter a media that should, if it was not controlled by corporations and the rich, investigate their pillage and corruption. 

Both forms of capitalism disembowel the country, but they do it with different tools and have different goals.

If you're in Maine, consider complaining to the Portland Press Herald which today published two articles on the election, including one focused on what's driving college students' votes, without once mentioning the genocide in Gaza. Journalistic malpractice is what I call it. Democratic Party aligned media want you to believe their party will protect abortion rights (they haven't and won't) and the environment (don't make me laugh), and that these are the issues that brought tens of thousands of young people out into the streets over the past year.

Then meet us at the No Votes for Genocide rally in Monument Square today, Saturday November 2, at 3pm. It's part of a national mobilization ahead of the election. 

Then, see NAILA AND THE UPRISING at 7pm at nearby Space gallery (reserve your free tickets here). Co-presented by the Maine Palestine Film Collective, the Maine Coalition for Palestine, and Multitude Films. Trailer available here on YouTube. 

The U.S.-Israel war on Palestinians didn't start on October 7, 2023 and it won't end on November 5, 2024. But it will end someday, and people in the U.S. cannot escape forever the consequences of imperial bullying around the globe.