“Those who have been truly silenced in the ‘Trump era’ are those who were critical of the seemingly perpetual U.S. government war machine since the invasion of Iraq.”
Spot-on, Mr. Husseini.
The anti-war left has been silenced. That’s precisely what has happened to us. For all intents and purposes, we no longer exist.
The “Trump era” marks unthinkable gains for the neocons, steamrolling progressives and turning mainstream liberals into warmongering propagandists for the Deep State.
Early in Trump’s time in office, the establishment demanded the ouster of his administration’s most prominent, anti-neocon “isolationists” because… Russia? And whaddaya’ know, those Trump-appointed opponents of the neocons lost their senior-level positions and were succeeded by the likes of… John Bolton and Mike Pompeo!
Because the establishment always gets its way, in these post-democracy times in America. People vote for one thing and get the opposite, no matter what.
Barack Obama ran against the neocons in 2008, just as Trump did in 2016, yet both presidents ended up giving the neocons practically everything they demanded, early on in their respective administrations — which is why half a million Syrians died for nothing and slavery made a huge comeback in Libya on President Obama’s watch… and why millions of Yemenis are on the brink of starvation TODAY.
Thank you, President Obama… thank you, Donald.
(Americans, where are you? WHO are you?)
The neocon atrocities keep piling up, making our country the most feared and distrusted nation in the world.
This is what happens when the mainstream no longer gives a damn about the Military Industrial Complex’s genocidal conduct over the last several decades.
This is what happens when average, everyday Americans — nominal “Christians” and “Liberals” — decide to ignore rampant, torturing, Muslim-slaughtering illegality on the part of the Deep State.
In the mainstream’s defense, I fully acknowledge that the vast majority of this monstrous, Nazi-like conduct has been swept under the rug by our corporate/neo-fascist media and badly corrupted institutions, like the U.S. Congress and presidency. Whether the treasonous high-criminal is Dick Nixon, Ronald Reagan, “Poppy” Bush, Bill Clinton, Bush/Cheney, or Barack Obama, our institutions always “LOOK FORWARD” when American elites foment coups, steal elections, murder millions, plunder trillions, assassinate, torture, and apply genocidal sanctions, murdering hundreds of thousands of babies…
But generally speaking, the mainstream quit paying attention years ago, after the Vietnam War.
As if to illustrate the point, many in the mainstream seemed just fine with Wall Street sycophant and neocon stalwart, Sec. Hillary Clinton, a career racist demagogue, rigging her way to the Democratic nomination — Hillary Fucking CLINTON, a completely amoral politician who has done more for the neocons’ bloody agenda (and Wall Street and Saudi butchers) than any of her ilk save for Bush/Cheney!
This is what happens when phony liberals deny the left its TRUE CANDIDATE, the shamelessly, brazenly robbed 2016 primary winner, Bernie Sanders, who the polls showed mopping the floor with Trump by double-digits — and probably restoring Democratic control of the Congress with his single-payer healthcare touting coattails.
This is what happens when the mainstream keeps going back to the same institutions that have done nothing but LIE to us and turn liberals into extreme right-wingers over the past few decades.
Not only did the NYT and WaPo lie us into war with Iraq, burying the facts, they constantly distort facts, when it comes to their foreign reporting. Most of their unquestioning “Good German” readers still believe that Hugo Chavez was some kind of “dictator!” That Dilma Rousseff was “corrupt” and her ouster constitutional! These deluded dupes believe that Julian Assange has been hunted and persecuted because he’s a “rapist” and not because WikiLeaks has repeatedly exposed the high crimes, corruption, and treachery of our leaders and world-dominating institutions…)
Nominal liberals, groupthinking and hunky dory with neocon policy, have arguably become worse than Donald J. Trump: race-baiting demagogue, outrageous misogynist, and compassionless egomaniac.
They are outraged over hush money paid to a porn star, but they don’t make a peep when U.S. sanctions murder hundreds of thousands of children under five.
Or when a Democratic president nullifies habeas corpus, assassinating Americans uncharged with crimes, with ZERO due process. Calling it “legal.”
While Trump continues to subvert, defy, and disappoint the neocons — when he isn’t giving in to them (which also happens; Obama deja vu) — nominal liberals have become unquestioning supporters of RussiaGating NAZIS (worse than Nazis – NEOCONS: the Muslim-slaughtering monsters who are in the vanguard of the empire that is killing our planet; THE faction that has revived fascism and dismantled the rule of law, hollowing out economies the world over, including ours, leaving millions upon millions of corpses in their wake, the vast majority civilians… women and children).
The neocons and their “liberal” minions (like the Democratic Party, the WaPo and NYT, Mr. Colbert, Ms. Maddow, Bill Maher…) have recklessly courted a third World War.
They have succeeded in dragging our society down with them largely because of the power of HATE (of the “Two Minutes” variety).
Because the mainstream-left has allowed Trump’s repellent hideousness to impair their critical thinking skills and turn them into exemplars of the worst traits we associate with Trump: xenophobic, bellicose, irrational, easily manipulated, and self-indulgent beyond any concern for who gets hurt.
Addicted to propaganda, feeding off their emotions, mainstream liberals have apparently not learned to distinguish between the institutions that have incessantly sold us wars on lies (and I mean for decades, Tonkin through baby incubators through WMD through Sarin gas through RussiaGate through…)
…and the journalists who still have an ounce of integrity.*
Sam Husseini is one of the latter.
And his thesis is spot-fucking-on.
* Consortium News, Max Blumenthal, Moderate Rebels (podcast), Chris Hedges, Glen Ford/Black Agenda Report, Glenn Greenwald, Global Research, Caitlin Johnstone, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, The Jimmy Dore Show, Katie Halper, Vanessa Beeley, Aaron Mate (The Real News), Medea Benjamin, Ann Wright, Patrick Cockburn, John Pilger, Mahmood Mamdani, Tariq Ali, Ralph Nader, The ACLU, Jeremy Scahill, WikiLeaks, Briahna Joy Gray, Greg Palast, David Swanson, Dr. Cornel West, Prof. Stephen F. Cohen, Eva Bartlett, Rania Khalek, Seymour Hersh, Naomi Klein, KPFA (SF Bay Area), Oliver Stone, Electronic Intifada…