President Trump: The Ultimate Trial Of American Liberals

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The United States of America stands on the precipice of a transition that will define it forever.

The current neoliberal order that has championed unfettered capitalism, gutted and privatized many social welfare institutions and destroyed other safety nets has been proven a failure. It has enriched a select few, mostly white people living in urban centers, and in so doing has disenfranchised and incarcerated millions here at home and expanded its blood sucking tentacles abroad, waging wars on nations that resist its economic agenda. As a result, the Clinton and Obama version of corrupt and morally-bankrupt neoliberalism has fortified a class of people that are rightfully disgruntled.

Right-wing forces have waited in the shadows for exactly such an opportunity. These reactionary, conservative, xenophobic, homophobic, nativist, misogynist and white supremacist groups have latched on to the legitimate anger of the disenfranchised working class to propel Donald Trump into the White House and take both houses of Congress.

Election 2016 & The Rise Of Propaganda In America

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The attacks on the planet, civil liberties and human rights are at the core of the American profit-driven, hierarchically-based governing system. While the ultra-rich keep prospering, large swaths of the population are disenfranchised. The tenures of Republican President Ronald Reagan and Democratic President Bill Clinton largely fortified and accelerated these assaults, exemplifying the bipartisan collusion of the elites against regular Americans.

Much has been written about the unprecedented inequality in the United States. An additional marker of a society in crisis is the status of the mental health of its population. With policies that have led to the privatization of prisons and health care, the deregulation of an already privatized pharmaceutical industry and a defunding of public mental health clinics, the nation is currently plagued by a mental health crisis that is reflected in a devastating heroin epidemic.

But how can a system maintain legitimacy while riddled with such gross corruption and inequality?

It’s Almost Palestinian Hunting Season, Again

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May 2017 will mark fifty years of Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, characterized by institutionalized inequality and injustice toward Palestinians.

At the bidding of the government, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) routinely and violently confronts Palestinians, but also Israeli and international dissidents who dare challenge the continued expansion and entrenchment of the illegal settlements in the West Bank and the blockade of the Gaza strip. Protesters run the risk of getting cursed, spat on, detained, beaten up, stoned, stabbed, shot, kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured or any combination thereof. Moreover, in an unfortunate yet predictable move, the Israeli government has recently declared war on the nonviolent boycott divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

Like clockwork, every few years a cycle of violence disproportionately bathes Palestinian society in blood and tears and serves to further fortify the occupation (see “Israeli Occupation for Dummies”). According to renowned scholar Ilan Pappe, Israeli society needs a regular dose of war not only as a means to justify its excessive military budget and lucrative arms industry, but as a tool to reaffirm itself as a cohesive settler-colonialist entity faced with an existential threat.