Time to Unplug the American Century and Restart the Machine
Mr. EW and I are closing on our 25th wedding anniversary in a few months.
Yeah, us!
I raise that not because I’m expecting you all to start shopping silver (that’s what I’m supposed to buy anyway, right? Mr. EW insists it’s power tool anniversary again anyway).
I say that as a way of conveying that, in a literal sense, I have been married to Europe for (effectively) the entirety of this century.
Sure, I had an affinity before that. In a Czech class in Prague in 1997 , for example, on a day when the other American was absent, the entire class told me I seemed like a European and why didn’t I just move. Without a beat, one of them said, “But you stay there and fix it for the rest of us.” I can’t tell you how deeply I felt (and feel) an obligation to fulfill that order.
And so I think of where we go from here, both in the larger effort to defeat Trumpism, but more specifically in a week when Europe contemplates what to do about the Greenland crisis, I’m cognizant what a shitty hegemon the US has been in this century.
Three of the four things that gave Trump a foothold, in my opinion, were failures in this century (the fourth is the legacy of slavery and the organized political violence that replaced it).
The other three, though, are the War on Terror, the financial crisis, and social media. (COVID was the final catalyst, I think; having moved during the height of COVID, I can’t express how much worse the US dealt with it than much of the EU, and now Trump is using the aftermath of his own jerry-rigged system — COVID fraud — as his excuse to invade Minnesota.)
I had been thinking this anyway. As we optimistically imagine things we would need to do recover from Trump, I think the US should simply reset the computer to 2000 (preferably before Bush v. Gore), and start over again. Don’t spend 20 years creating new terrorists in response to a terrorist attack. Don’t expand emergency and executive power beyond all recognition, in the process foreswearing America’s rickety Cold War claim to be an exceptional nation. Don’t bail out bankers who destroyed the global economy and, especially, wiped out the wealth of broad swaths of the population. And sure as hell don’t demand austerity in response, a betrayal of the post-war consensus that staved off the kind of malaise we’re seeing drive extremism. And whatever you do, do not grant the banksters’ counterpart, the techbros, their own chance to remake the world, mainstreaming far right extremists in the process. I feel like the coming AI collapse may be social media’s crisis point, and sadly, the techbros have prepared for it by implanting David Sacks in the White House.
Thinking in these terms does not provide immediate solutions. Reminding EU ministers how much of today’s economic malaise and immigration scapegoating arose from American failures doesn’t provide a solution. But it does provide one possible frame, one that can exploit increasing global animosity towards Trump, as a scapegoat.
Mark Carney got elected on a wave of animosity to Trump and he is not the only one.
There was a Defense One report on the National Security Strategy — not matched by any other outlet and therefore of uncertain provenance — that nevertheless haunts me. It disavows the inexpensive power projection of hegemony by imagining American hegemony as nothing more than American domination.
The full NSS also spends some time discussing the “failure” of American hegemony, a term that isn’t mentioned in the publicly released version.
“Hegemony is the wrong thing to want and it wasn’t achievable,” according to the document.
In this context, hegemony refers to the leadership by one country of the world, using soft power to encourage other countries to consent to being led.
“After the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country,” the NSS states. “Yet the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests.”
I don’t think that’s right at all. Whoever wrote this, for example, seems to misunderstand how fragile an invasion of Venezuela without regime change can be — and importantly, how much worse Venezuela will be if, instead of attempting to reign in Maduro’s mafia state, instead blesses it. (In reality, America’s failures started before my designated reset date, when the US believed Shock Doctrine was a good way to cure communism rather than foster mafia states.) I don’t think the person who wrote that “Hegemony is the wrong thing to want” has considered how many advantages the dollar exchange has given the US. I don’t think the person who wrote, “Hegemony is the wrong thing to want” has thought through all the ways that coercion is more likely to backfire.
America was a piss poor global policeman, but the alternative we’re facing down now is worse for the US and worse for much of the world.
And if Donald Trump wants to embody those failures, providing a ready political response, well then, he asked for it.
Donald Trump has abdicated America’s role as a hegemon.
Well, okay then.
However else the rest of the world responds, they (we) should keep in mind that we can reject the underlying choices that created Trump as a symptom.
I think that the destruction of the dollar as the world reserve currency is a goal of many who speak into Trump’s ear. They want crypto to replace the dollar, as they stand to become the new power in the world if it is. They also know that they can’t tell Trump that, so instead egg him into these areas that will destroy the faith in the dollar.
Sitting in Silicon Valley, I can say I fully agree with this statement. I will say that it goes beyond that now though. There is an unsettling draping of the mantle of Christianity in Silicon Valley now. That has aligned many here with the GOP version of Evangelical and Catholic Christianity.
Some say it is an effort to get closer to Peter Thiel, some say it is because , like Sam Altman, there are those here who want to make a God substitute . There has been a remarkable upsurge in the reading of the 1626 novel “The New Atlantic” as a template for what tech should be doing for mankind. It is hard to miss the similarities between this and the motivating factors behind Project 2025.
An excellent article on this subject is in Vanity Fair from March.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/christianity-was-borderline-illegal-in-silicon-valley-now-its-the-new-religion
Thank you for this analysis.
About, “Three of the four things that gave Trump a foothold, in my opinion, were failures in this century”,
I think there is a crucial fifth, stretching well back into the 20th century: The project to remake American law.
The Powell Memo, the Law and Economics movement and the Federalist Society, among the other things they created that tie into EW’s list, also killed the American dream. The crushing power of corporate law, the distortion or Orwellian reinterpretation of the Constitution and laws, and the castration of the regulatory state
gave rise to the hopeless conditions that led `What the hell can I lose?’ voters to vote for Trump.
If there is a path away from the event horizon we seem to be approaching, it needs to involve the complete destruction of the institutions that gave rise to those conditions and the banishment from public life of those who pushed for them.
The “…institutions that gave rise to those conditions…” necessarily and centrally include the Supreme Court.
EW referenced Bush v. Gore, a tawdry landmark of a ruling in which the majority insisted its decision not be used as precedent–in other words, SCOTUS was serving a political function. It was not to be the last.
I fail to see, however, the way forward should we indeed “complete[ly]” destroy the judicial system. Would that include erasing the Constitution too? Humans tend not to do well when given blank slates; we crave structure and organizing principles. We need somewhere (not nowhere) to start.
Fixing SCOTUS requires dramatic Congressional action. It won’t happen without preparing the way with hearings.
Even if the SCOTUS rogues could be removed, we’d still have the problem of precedent. I think Congress would have to pass a law creating a presumption that any decision by an impeached jurist would be void.
I would argue that the way that amendments have become impossible is the source of several of the disasters of US politics; indeed, I’d say that the fact that anti-abortionists saw an amendment as not a possible response to Roe and that an amendment would not be a viable response to Roe being overturned was the driving impetus for how SCOTUS has become corrupted.
Not that I know how to actually replace the amendment process, but I know what I’d replace it with – require a vote of a simple majority of all eligible voters (not votes, voters – so people who don’t vote effectively count as voting against).
I have watched the power transfer in American law for the past 60 years: public good to corporate wealth. However, getting rid of the judicial system leaves a vacuum that will be filled by someone/something. I am not optimistic what that would be.
Power to make judicial appointments, and winning elections would tend in the right direction. Voting in legislators who could create more balanced laws is necessary. All of this requires something outside the current system. Which as far as I can tell, is based solely on money.
As Paul Wellstone always said, “Organize, organize, organize.”
What a loss, Wellstone. I wish I could access the alternative universe where he is still alive.
If the US not using soft power and instead uses domination, the only outcome is that everyone in the world hates our guts and does what they can to overcome these constraints.
This is about as close to a fundamental law of human nature as there can be IMO.
Trump and the far right think people will merely acquiesce. That is never the case; people may pretend to comply but they will always seek to find a way to overcome bondage.
Trump is a cartoonish mobster who cannot even bend over to place his ball on a tee and his mental defects always make him the easiest of marks.
“[T]he only outcome is that everyone in the world hates our guts …”.
My fear: It is one thing for someone who hates our guts to travel across an ocean to the US from somewhere such as the middle east. But it’s another thing altogether for someone to travel to the US (to bus stops, subways, theaters, pubs, etc.) from, e.g., Venezuela or Mexico.
“This is about as close to a fundamental law of human nature as there can be IMO.”
Social justice “beatdowns of bullies” occur on various stages: in primate settings (Bonobo “Girl Gangs”); in small towns (e.g., but taken inappropriately, wrongly, to an unfortunate extreme: Skidmore, Missouri; 1981 killing of Ken Rex McElroy); and on the world stage (of course, Hitler’s Germany). What can we expect to happen now, with the US move to take Greenland, given the threat this presents to the EU and NATO?
It is ironic and sad that but for the failure of a “beatdown” of a single human-primate bully, one which should have occurred long, long ago, we are now subject to a “beatdown” on the global stage.
I sometimes try to tell people about a dream, while awake, I experienced several years ago (I believe, pre-Trump 1) in which the world’s armies, largely under China’s leadership, defeated the dangerous aggressor nation, the United States. At the time it seemed a dystopian nightmare daydream. Its starting to seem more prophetic.
They kind of already do. I have to tend to a sick relative in Kingston ON, so I am there about once a month or two. In a lot of places in Ontario, when an American swipes a credit card, they have to sign the receipt, where Canadian cards do not. Over the past couple of months, the regular and very pleasant interactions between me and someone at a store has immediately ended when the receipt printed. This is modest college town of 100,000 or so people with a broad history with upstate NY including a 200 year old ferry across the St Lawrence River that is now hostile to the purchase of two bottles of wine. Now run this multiple out to potentially former friends in Europe and Asia and try to imagine the impact. I think they are also over the “I didn’t vote for him” thing as well. Depending too much on a macro view of our current crisis with potential macro solutions can’t begin to account for the billions of small transactions that will be lost for a very long time
I am probably misremembering, but on my read of Toynbee (however wrong he was on other things), one part that stuck with me was that the power of a culture grows when people outside of it are attracted to and emulate it, and wanes and fails when that ends. However imperfectly attractive America was before, Trump and his coterie are doing everything possible to sabotage the attraction of America.
Best wishes to all the EW’s for the coming anniversary. I think that silver power tools would be just the thing. Also, right now I think you are managing to both live in Europe and be a real force working to make things better here in the states–so all of your European classmates in Prague were on the right track. Thanks, once again, for your insight and for this incredibly valuable forum.
Congrats on the 25th! One of the things I taught my daughters (with plenty of practice, of course) was the development of the death glare to prevent things like the purchase of power tools or worse, a boat (best described as a hole in the water where one pours money). After all, non-verbal communication is a cornerstone of marriage.
I’m not so sure, however that time traveling just to fix Bush v Gore is the answer. You’d have to go back to Joe McCarthy and his right hand man Roy Cohn at least, because there have been noisy faux ‘patriots’ who leverage bad news into bad policy since at least that time, to stop the threat of the DFHs by whatever names applied since then. However, the press let them get away with it to preserve ‘access’ which became a business decision once the consolidation of media outlets really took hold.
I’ve known a few boat owners who enjoyed their first year of ownership, forked out mucho dinero for repairs in the 2nd and subsequent years, and then became non-boat owners shortly thereafter. Seems to be a fairly predictable arc…
There are two happy days in a boat owner’s life: the day they buy it, and the day they sell it.
Happy 25th Anniversary to EW and Mr. EW.
Boats require constant maintenance even in fresh water. It’s worse in salt water.
As for the power tools, an inoculation that can prevent the disease is to get into set construction for the community theater. If you’re lucky like I was you’ll have a technical director that knows how to use Solidworks.
My father was a BSME and loved his power tools. He could build prototypes in his shop and not have to deal with the machinists’ union (which didn’t think he should be in *their* shop). He started, when I was too young to remember, with a bench saw and a drill press (Sears Craftsman). Metal lathe from granny’s neighbor, in the mid-60s; jeweler’s lathe, later an arc welder and a small million machine and a band saw…
My wife — who also has *plenty* of power tools — has in the last few months taken up the hobby of refurbishing hand tools. So now we are awash in hand planes and hand drills in various states of repair/relacquerring. They’re all at least 75 years old, and I know she pointed out one to me that she thinks was manufactured in the 1880s.
There’s a guy who posts at dKos about refurbishing tools and motors. Alsways interesting – and he gets into things like relacquering.
All boat owners quickly learn what BOAT stands for: Bust Out Another Thousand
The trick is to join a boating club of some kind. The you still have a boat to use, but you pay for repairs and insurance as a group.
Over here in British Columbia we say that BOAT stands for “Bust Out Another Thousand” (which goes very well with BC standing for “Bring Cash” and my area being called the land of the “Sunshine Tax”)
But a silver boat sounds really nice tho… there are these three old men who have RC toy yachts that take them to sail every week at the lake just down the street from me – my boyfriend sees them and chats with them regularly during his bike rides and it always cheers him up as he finds them very nice and approachable – and adorably excited about their boats – despite him being very shy.
So perhaps a silver RC yacht could be in order? Something nice and shiny but also beefy enough for the local rivers/wetlands in Ireland? With a wee tricolour, stars & stripes, and a jolly roger to boot, on the mast?
Anyhoo Happy Anniversary Mr & Mrs EW, you’re the best and total gems! xox
“After the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country,” was a failure to conceive of how American soft power works. The incomplete project, the city on the hill, that gives everyone a goal to aspire towards.
And, ironically, left themselves open to the soft power of American fascism/fifth columnists. The Federalist Society has revealed itself to be a Royalist Society in disguise. Campaign funding by corporations, leading to granting full citizenship to “pieces of paper” while restricting the citizenship rights of true-but-not-proper-shade Americans. Liberals and moderates led down paths paved with good intentions through disingenuous “We’re all friends here” and “Agree to disagree” and the like until “Maximize Shareholder Value” replaced “Good Pay for a Good Day’s Work”.
I don’t know where we go from January 20, 2029 forward, but the credibility is gone in almost every area necessary. And I don’t imagine that a revamp of the American Project is in the offing. Things shouldn’t get that bad that quickly only to rebound just as quickly. Which leaves America in a bad situation: the threats of China and Russia won’t have disappeared and need our leadership to counter but how can anyone trust our leadership so quickly again? How does America both serve the world humbly while providing leadership in doing so?
First Draft has a video of MLK’s 1967 Stanford lecture on the other America. It’s worth checking out to see how little we have learned in almost 60 years.
link?
For some reason when I post links it gets sent to moderator jail.
[Moderator’s note: The system will send any comment with four links or more to auto-moderation. It may send comments with fewer to auto-mod depending on other factors. In this particular situation, to publish just one URL in a comment, “break” the URL with blank spaces like so:
ht tp: // www. empty wheel. net
— putting the blank space after periods since the site’s software will recognize a dotcom or dotnet as part of a website address. /~Rayne]
When copying a link, highlight it and try right clicking and choosing “copy clean link”
That seems to remove the tracking
The video is at the end of this morning’s post about MLK day.
Attempt to link youtube. https://youtu.be/m3H978KlR20
Thanks for mentioning that post, Rugger.
Link: https://first-draft.com/2026/01/19/mlk-day-2026/
Congrats on your upcoming 25th anniversary.
I hate to mention this, but I haven’t seen a single mention of morale in the US military. How eager are American soldiers, sailors and airmen to fight and die for Trump and Hegseth?
It’s as if the military service is made up of hundreds of thousands of automatons, ready to die for Trump’s whims of iron.
It’s hard to gauge morale. The bases have media access that is tilted toward the RWNM in spite of laws saying otherwise, and just this last week we have the report that Stars and Stripes was going to be under Convict-1’s editorial thumb. For the base commanders, this is as much about keeping the troops riled up and ready to lock and load as anything else. Let’s also recall that most bases are in territory not served by MS Now, for example so only one viewpoint is presented. The troops won’t know anything else. FWIW, Stars and Stripes was never very liberal, even in my time.
With that said, actual mutiny is extremely rare, it’s more likely that absent some polarizing event (Good’s murder could be that tipping point) orders would be followed grudgingly.
For the record, for the past 50 years, at least, barracks have a TV in the common room and it is not controlled by the command. Anything on the basic cable can be watched during off-duty hours. Added to that, modern barracks rooms are wired for cable, and many of the troops have their own tvs and pay for their own private cable at whatever level the troops want to pay for, and that includes cable internet. It’s not your Dad’s military.
All around the Pentagon you’ll find news services screened on high-mounted TVs. You can work from a grid, or select a single channel. When I was there (2009 – 2017) a lot of them were tuned to Fox. Sad.
Rugger_9, Thank you for replying. I don’t think America’s soldiers are ready to fight for Trump’s iron whims. For a five time draft evader?
On the other hand, Trump has undergone a process, like an Egyptian pharaoh, of divination. His followers insist, and come to believe, that Trump has all the qualities they want him to have.
A good businessman? Please! A Christian? Even more ridiculous. A world changing military leader? No, a simple thief and con man.
But he’s been divinized. Each day he creates our world anew. Give us this day our daily content.
On MS Now this afternoon, Alicia Menendez is sitting in for Nicole Wallace and she had on one of the retired Generals who comment on military matters. I forget the name of the one she was speaking with [ he looks like Sam Eagle from the Muppets] regarding the prospect of sending American military against our NATO allies.
He very carefully reminded the Generals and Admirals preparing those under them that they would be breaking not only international law but also American law because of the signed treaties.
It will be interesting to see if the DOJ ads him to the list of those under Pentagon investigation.
Mark Hertling
One criticism I saw of the Mark Kelly video was that they were asking service members, who aren’t lawyers, to determine if something is unlawful.
I’m old enough to remember W’s administration’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” at Guantanamo. Those “techniques” got the Ok by the administration’s lawyers.
John Yoo put his name on at least one of those. We haven’t forgotten that here.
Under the JD’s thumb more likely than Sharpie’s. That was his area in the military. More of a gossip columnist for a vacuous military magazine than good military writing.
Trump’s putting elements of the 11 Airborne Division (Arctic Angels) on alert for possible deployment to Minnesota probably put a bunch of soldiers on edge. Most of them don’t like doing that “stuff”. That’s not good for morale.
And the smarter (or more conspiracy-prone) among those soldiers are wondering if the whole Minnesota thing is a feint, meant to distract everyone from a more malign mission — assault on Greenland. Flying from Alaskan bases to the Space Port in Greenland is about 2/3 the distance to DC. And that could be a feint too, which leaves “allies” and adversaries alike a bit uncertain.
I once kinda considered Trump’s feints and distractions as the ultimate self-licking ice cream cone. But he seems to come up with these linked distractions: A distracting from B, who is distracting from C, who is….
“A distracting from B, who is distracting from C, who is….A distracting from B, who is distracting from C, who is….”
…distracting from Epstein.
Hence my comment above about the General warning about involvement in illegal actions.
The Endless Global War on Terror was George W. Bush’s gift to the world. The financial crisis was the Democratic party’s deep-rooted need to preserve the status quo at all costs. No one foresaw social media as a programmable fire the monkey brains could gather around to have stories downloaded into them, though from experience the Republican party quickly grasped the potential and bet heavy on it, and won.
For a long time both political parties agreed on American hegemony and America profited handsomely. Farrel’s Invisible Empire outlines the hard systems America put in place to support and backstop that soft power. And the Republican party has abandoned it all to serve Trump. It is an astonishing collapse and betrayal, and no one has attempted to explain it but it is a fact on the ground. Believing brute force can replace hegemony is not just foolish, it is delusional. Our current military cannot project that kind of power unless like in a kung-fu movie our foes line up to attack us one at a time.
I’ve been reading Sakamoto Ryuichi’s autobiography in Japanese as I found a copy in a Little Free Library, and an English translation will not be published until September. This morning, he wrote about USAmerica after 9/11, where he was living at the time, and the clear break he saw between a pluralistic society and an Imperialistic one. It was obvious to him as it should be more and more obvious to us.
The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the whole history of USAmerica is one of aspiration. It’s not only called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it, as George Carlin so rightfully said; it’s also the American Dream because we do not have it now and must keep working toward it, with our better natures rather than the permission to be our own worst selves that Trmp has enacted all his life.
We must continue to dream and, more importantly, do.
Congratulations on 25 years of married life. May you have great joy together, with power tools or silver or both.
Donald Trump, Keir Starmer, and the US-Britain special relationship:
https:// http://www.theguardian .com/commentisfree/picture/2026/jan/19/ben-jennings-special-relationship-donald-trump-keir-starmer-cartoon
That didn’t work out so well, though it’s obvious how to correct the link: delete the almost redundant, ” http://” and the space after “guardian”.
greg olear’s latest Prevail rant (link broken properly?)
https:// gregolear.substack.com /p/ramble-on-the-perils-of-invading
Invading Greenland likened to “the archduke,” a reference to the start of WW1, with frightful and unknown consequences to our country, and everywhere else. commenter likened Putin to Trump’s GPS .
Marcy,
Congratulations!! 25 years is amazing and silver too. Yes to power tools or chrome vanadium wood chisels and a silver polished yeast spoon is always handy. We are in this together. No Kings. Peace. Christopher and family
A former student who is a rigger (the people who pack parachutes professionally) in the 11th Airborne Division tells me the rumor around the base is that the two battalions supposedly getting ready to deploy to Minneapolis are really flying to Nuuk.
Malcom Nance says so as well. After all, arctic warfare is what that particular unit specializes in, and while MN is damn cold, there’s also the ICE brownshirts in abundance and the Army wouldn’t be of much use there. Might as well send the Space Force after their tour on ice planet Hoth.
Arguing against the deployment to Greenland is the fact well known to the generals that dropping the soldiers in Creenland means putting them in a very isolated salient with literally no easy logistic support between the Canada gauntlet and the UK as well as the EU NATO troops there. Who is the enemy then?
Thanks for pointing out. Here’s Malcolm’s analysis of troop movements and potential airport seizures.
Malcolm says he will head to Greenland and report from there. Which gives me flashbacks to February 2022, with Malcolm reporting from Ukraine.
https://youtu.be/9sMf3b2Mwfk
They could cover themselves a little bit by going to the Space Port, which is even closer to Alaskan bases. The excuse could be that it is a readiness exercise and leave TACO with some room to back out of it.
If flight tracking showed C-130s in addition to C-17s, that could mean a more tactical approach.
Now, he wants Greenland because he didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize. Threatening an ally. We are watching an elderly man’s accelerating decent into madness
You know what frightens the hell out of me?
Ah! I knew you would want to know.
Russia goes under, which it is close to doing, and Trump takes the credit for it!! Like all that ‘stopped 8 or more wars’ shit. Makes himself a big American hero!
I wanted a Nobel Medal too, but I’m too proud to beg for one. This evening I’m going to try making a 3D print from one of the two STL files I found. Gold silk filament…mmmmmm…Gold.
I should get some kind of prize for being North America’s mostest noble-est ungulate. And, if I may say so, the ultimate in taxidermy.
But I won’t. You can count on that. Nothing, nada, bupkis will be forthcoming in the way of recognition.
Congratulations on your 25th!
Thank you for your wonderful perspective, superior investigative powers, and of course, your fine wit and eloquence! You are making things better.
Agree we need a ctrl-z, undo, restart/reboot on this wild game/simulation we are in.
Over the past few years I tend to recommend two books to anyone needing the fix of great, meaningful writing – H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald and Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford. And for anyone needing the fix of great, meaningful writing of a current political nature I recommend emptywheel.net. For your words and thoughts, Marcy, of course, but also for the comments. Silver all around.
Congratulations on your upcoming anniversary, Marcy! In today’s world, a stable and loving relationship is the greatest asset you can own. My wife and I just celebrated 40 years together and it has been a wonderful ride. The only thing I will comment on the post is that we really need to all be talking about Trump’s mental health (as Rayne’s recent post so brilliantly captures). Trump is losing cognitive processing abilities on almost a daily basis and it appears he is having fits of anger and petulance that are common in dementia patients. We should be talking 24/7/365 that this man is mentally unfit for the office of President of the United States!
I don’t think the person who wrote, “Hegemony is the wrong thing to want” has thought through all the ways that coercion is more likely to backfire.
Particularly when those you are trying to coerces hold a ton of your debt.
The title of this article may or may-not be a call-out to the neo-conservative, war-mongering Project for a New American Century (PNAC). PNAC, heavily tied to Dick Cheney, sought to build American hegemony (“benevolent global hegemony”), support democracies around the world, and build American defense which includes “multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars”.
Going back 25-30 years back, to when Emptywheel suggests resetting America to, PNAC aggressively pushed regime change in Iraq. Infamously, PNAC suggested America would need a Pearl Harbor-like event in order to get public support for Iraq regime change; and then 9/11 seemingly fell into their lap to use to shape American foreign policy.
The Republican party somehow was able to go from implementing disastrous forever wars and the GWOT to Donald Trump running on being a candidate for the opposite, in just a generation.
PNAC founders were Bill Kristol (now a never Trumper) and Robert Kagan (who endorsed Hillary in 2016). And Dick Cheney endorsed Kamala over Trump in 2024.
It might be interesting to peruse through PNAC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century
Thank you for this post and the link to MLK 1967 talk. I was born just after the bomb, so have been aware of life in the 40s and the delights. and horrors of the 50s +. TV was live at that time and I was very into politics- the idea of being an American- and watched Dwight Eisenhower be cowed by Sen McCarthy and the 2 Dullies. How can the hero of WW2, the most powerful man in the world not condemn McCarthy? TV allowed me to watch in real time the Army McCarthy hearings (with Roy Cohn- I knew he was gay when I was 8) and the famous “Have You No Sense of Decency? “My parents were Republicans, I worked during elections…And then came JFK and I saw what a president should be, a defender of the WE in We the people, providing a decent government for all, to protect all. He inspired people to do the best. But some time after he was assassinated (was Eisenhower afraid of that) there was a rumor of a secret meeting- agreement between politicians/government and the business world that lead the country on a new path. Presidents after that all seemed to be blah..is that why Clinton seemed never to have heard of FDR, even Obama forced ‘no discussion’ of universal health care. I can’t think about Trump’s actions without the knowledge we will never even be able to get back to the ‘so called normality’ of Bush vs Gore.
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Congratulations on 25 years together, EW and Mr. EW! That’s a lot of years!
We’re going on 22 in a month. Still can’t believe we made it through *two*.
To be fair, those first two years are a doozy. I tell young newlyweds to avoid big projects like redecorating or construction. Yeesh. We’re all lucky to have gotten through them.
Our first-two-year big projects included six cats (voluntary–mine), getting evicted and sued by my landlord, and me descending further into the illness that would soon cost me my job/career (those involuntary).
Those were desperate times–so much so that I have fond memories of Keith Olbermann’s show, a respite from the “War on Terror” hoopla that helped absolutely nothing.
We moved into a house the day after the wedding which was our first big mistake. So much unnecessary fretting over money at the time. The d-word passed frequently along the length of the galley kitchen while removing wallpaper — with wads of hot, steamed paper flying — and again while shopping for carpet which we ended up not getting for another couple years. Good thing we put off having kids for a few years.
We made it to 35 years this past year. I am rather shocked all these years later that we were so stubborn.
Cheers to both of you on the occasion of your 25th. Something to celebrate, that love and commitment. Not to mention, living through the last quarter century.
I understand why we need to look back as far as the so-called War on Terror, one of the dark angels present at the birth of the Imperial Presidency. Back in those early EW days, Firedoglake had, it seems to me, book discussions with authors, and I have been wishing we could have such a thing now with journalist Tim Weiner to tell us all about his adventures writing “The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century,” which has been blowing my mind all week.
We could have used these sharp insights 25 years ago.
Happy anniversary.
We could start by repealing the PATRIOT Act. It’s done more harm than good.