Do Americans Understand How Badly They’re Doing?

The 4th of July holiday is just past us and many Americans remain  lost in the myth of American exceptionalism as the much of the nation remains in the grip of a pandemic that other nations appear to have brought under control.  Yes, America is exceptional alright, but not in a good way.  Meanwhile I see some Facebook friends struggle to continue close their eyes to the reality that the occupant of the White House has failed them miserably - as have boot-licking Republican governors.  These individuals seemingly refuse to believe that their leaders are not acting in the interests of citizens, but rather out of narcissism in the case of Trump, and fear in the case of self-prostituting Republicans.  One friend posted recently about how great powers have fallen over the centuries and then wondered if the United States was following this path. My response back would be, yes it is and that Trump, rather than "making America great again" has accelerated the nation's decline.  One has to wonder when the majority of Americans will open their eyes to this unpleasant reality.  A piece in The Atlantic by an American living in France looks at this question.  Here are article excerpts:

I returned to Paris with my family three months after President Emmanuel Macron had ordered one of the world’s most aggressive national quarantines, and one month after France had begun to ease itself out of it. When we exited the Gare Montparnasse into the late-spring glare, after a season tucked away in a rural village with more cows than people as neighbors, it was jarring to be thrust back into the world as we’d previously known it, to see those café terraces overflowing again with smiling faces.

The city had been culled of its tourists, though it was bustling with inhabitants basking in their reclaimed freedom. Half at most wore masks; the other half evinced indifference. We were in the midst of a crisis, I complained to my wife. Why were so many people unable to maintain even minimal discipline?

Glued as I am to the news from the U.S.—where I was born and grew up and travel frequently— I couldn’t shake the feeling that France was also opening up recklessly early. But I was wrong to worry. As Donald Trump’s America continues to shatter records for daily infections, France, like most other developed nations and even some undeveloped ones, seems to have beat back the virus.

The numbers are not ambiguous. From a peak of 7,581 new cases across the country on March 31, and with a death toll now just below 30,000—at one point the world’s fourth highest—there were just 526 new cases on June 13, the day we masked ourselves and took the train back to Paris. The caseload continues to be small and manageable.

America, however, is an utter disaster. Texas, Florida, and Arizona are the newest hubs of contagion, having apparently learned nothing from the other countries and states that previously experienced surges in cases. I stared at my phone in disbelief when the musician Rosanne Cash wrote on Twitter that her daughter had been called a “liberal pussy!” in Nashville for wearing a mask to buy groceries.

That insult succinctly conveys the crux of the problem. American leadership has politicized the pandemic instead of trying to fight it. I see no preparedness, no coordinated top-down leadership of the sort we’ve enjoyed in Europe. I see only empty posturing, the sad spectacle of the president refusing to wear a mask, just to own the libs. What an astonishing self-inflicted wound.

On June 26, a day when the U.S. notched some 45,000 new cases—how’s that for “American carnage”?—the European Union announced that it would loosen some travel restrictions but extend its ban on visitors from the United States and other hot-spot nations. On Tuesday, it confirmed that remarkable and deeply humiliating decision, a clear message that in pandemic management, the EU believes that the United States is no better than Russia and Brazil—autocrat-run public-health disasters—and that American tourists would pose a dire threat to the hard-won stability our lockdown has earned us. So much for the myth that the American political system and way of life are a model for the world.

We didn’t stay long in the city. Although the chance of contagion in Paris is minimal, the thought of unnecessary risk unnerved me, and so we left again for another round of self-imposed confinement. But this was a choice. I think of my mother and father trapped in New Jersey, in their 70s and 80s, respectively, and at the mercy of a society that is failing extravagantly to protect them. And it is failing to protect them not from some omnipotent enemy—as we believed in March and perhaps even as late as April—but from a tough and dangerous foe that many other societies have wrestled into submission.

I am infuriated. I am also reminded once again of the degree to which so many other countries deliver what is, in real terms, a palpably higher quality of life by any number of self-evident measures.

America is my home, and I have not emigrated. I have always found the truest expression of my situation in James Baldwin’s label of “transatlantic commuter.” I have lived in France off and on since the early 2000s, and it has been instructive over the decades to glimpse America’s stature reflected back to me through the eyes of a quasi-foreigner. If the country sparked fear and intense resentment under George W. Bush and mild resentment mixed with vicarious pride under Barack Obama, what it provokes under Trump has been something entirely new: pity and indifference. We are the pariah state now, but do we even see it?

Notre Dame: A Cathedral for a Fragile Age

Like many across the globe I was shocked and deeply saddened by the horrific fire at Notre Dame de Paris which has sat on the  Île de la Cité  - the historic heart of Paris in the middle of the River Seine - for 850 years.  Paris is perhaps my favorite city in the world. Part of my attachment to Paris and France may stem from the part of me that descends from French immigrants who ultimately settled in New Orleans.  Part may stem from my frequent visits to Paris years ago on business trips and more recently on pleasure trips, the last taking place last September.  Another part my come from the realization that without France, Yorktown might have been lost.  Visit the Yorktown Revolutionary War Museum and you are reminded that it was a joint American-French army that defeated the British after the French fleet had driven away British reinforcements.

Whatever the allure, on every trip to Paris, I'd visit Notre Dame or walk by it.  It seemed immortal and a forever constant. With luck, the French will restore Notre Dame and also restore that nation's national unity which has been frayed by far right forces and Russian meddling akin to what America suffered.  A piece in the New York Times also suggests that the cathedral and French culture and French Enlightenment - a strong source for the Founding Fathers - may remind Americans of what has been lost but is capable of being restored in its own society.   Here are column excerpts:

Kilometer Zero: Notre-Dame de Paris, the place from which distance in France is measured, the reference of a people, the starting point and endpoint, the “epicenter,” as President Emmanuel Macron put it. That is why so many people, religious or not, were in tears as the great cathedral burned. A part of themselves, their bearings, was aflame.

Ransacked during the revolution in an anticlerical frenzy, restored and rebuilt during the 19th century after tempers cooled, site of imperial coronation, national liberation and presidential funerals, Notre-Dame became the nation’s soul, the place where France could reconcile its turbulent history, the monarchical and the republican, the religious and the secular.

What is Paris after all? Beauty. The horror of it lay in watching beauty burn, the delicate spire toppling into an inferno of 800-year-old beams. Here was the best of humankind, as powerful an expression as exists of the sacred, going up in black smoke.

In a time of anxiety, of ugliness and hatred and lies, the blaze felt ominous. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” John Keats wrote, and that is “all ye need to know.”

A friend in Paris, Sarah Cleveland, wrote to me: “It was strangely quiet and still, as if people were in a trance, watching the fire boil inside the shell of the cathedral walls, like a caldron. The scene was solemn, reverent. Hopeless. It seemed impossible that something so monumental could be so fragile.”

Civilization is fragile. Democracy is fragile, like that spire. It is impossible today, it is dangerous, to ignore that. When a universal reference goes up in smoke, an abyss opens up.

Notre-Dame is a sanctuary, in a time when the American president spits on sanctuaries and has considered, as punishment, dumping poor migrants in those cities that dare to call themselves by that name.

Our Lady of Paris is still there after the blaze, with her towers, roofless now. President Macron vowed to rebuild the cathedral. Money is pouring in. The French president was dignified, a reminder of the unifying power of dignity at a time when it has vanished from the White House.

Notre-Dame, Macron said, is “our history” and “our imaginary”: a means, in other words, to remember and an inspiration to all who aspire for something transcendent, beyond self. The contribution of President Trump, for whom self is all, was to suggest sending “flying water tankers” to douse the cathedral. His advice was ignored.

Perhaps, for an American, the closest thing to Notre-Dame, in its power to represent the nation, is the Statue of Liberty, work of a French sculptor. A mist hung over the water the other day, with the magical result that the torch of liberty hovered in the air, apparently detached. Seeing it, I imagined Emma Lazarus’s poem rewritten for the age of Trump:

Give me your despots, your rich,Your vulgar tax evaders yearning to flee,The depraved and debauched that itchTo steal, I will make them free.Send these, the dishonorable, to watchHow easy it is to corrupt like me.

I don’t recall French civilization feeling so important in my lifetime. It’s what we have. There will be ugly polemics over the coming weeks, once the first shock passes, over who was responsible, how this disaster happened, what negligence was involved.

But in those silent, reverent, hymn-singing crowds on the streets of Paris, I also saw the possibility of a French coming-together in the determination to rebuild — not only the cathedral, but also a nation shaken by the violence of the Yellow Vest movement and the social divisions it reflects. The story of Notre-Dame is a story of endurance and rebirth.

It is also a story of European civilization. Notre-Dame survived Hitler, just. Its fragility, now demonstrated, demands Europe’s unity, too.

Here at home, Trump and many in the GOP have been destroying America's institutions just as thoroughly as yesterday's fire destroyed the roof of Notre Dame cathedral.  All of us must vow to rebuild those endangered institutions and protect them from Trump and those who would destroy them.  Just as the French will set about restoring Notre Dame.

Reflections on Paris and London 2018

Two weeks ago the husband and I along with two friends flew out of Washington Dulles to start our 2018 visit to Paris and London.  For me, it was likely the 7th - or more - visit to Paris and like the 5th or sixth visit to London.  My first visits to both cities were back in the 1981-1983 time frame when I was in-house counsel working for an oil company handling various international matters.  Our travel companions, a straight couple, but gay friendly, had never been to either city and were paying our airfare and accommodations in exchange for us planning the trio and serving as tour guides, if you will.  The goal was to show them an amazing time and to also indulge our love for both cities, each of which is a world capital yet so very different in so many ways (both are very LGBT friendly and when we went by London City Hall today, a rainbow flag was flying)

If pushed to choose which city I love more, my vote would go to Paris.  I love the architecture and the way in which the central city has been spared from modern monstrosities or soaring towers which are a total disconnect with the beautiful historic buildings.  London, in contrast is often modern next door to 18th century buildings in part because sections of London were destroyed during the blitz in World War II.  Paris escaped destruction due to the commanding German general's refusal to destroy parts of the city notwithstanding Hitler's orders to do so.

Both cities offer wonderful dining opportunities with London perhaps having more diverse offerings.  But for the nearly 100 miles we walked over the last two weeks - the husband and our travel companions all had apps that measured the amount of their walking - I hate to think how much weight we would have gained.  

In terms of getting around, both cities have amazing mass transits systems that make most American cities look very pathetic at best.  In both cities we bought unlimited 7-day travel cards and we made extensive use of the Metro/Underground systems which make New York City's system look very poorly maintained in comparison.   The train systems for travel outside the cities make Amtrak look positively horrible and the speed at which the trains travel - not counting the Eurostar which is in a class by itself - are amazing.  America could learn a great deal from both the UK and France on how to build remarkable and cost efficient mass transit systems (they could do the same on the issue of healthcare, especially France).

Since this is an LGBT blog, I'd be remiss if I did not mention the local men in each city.  Both being world capitals and deeply involved in the fashion industry, both cities have LOTS of handsome men (and women for female LGBT readers), but the men of Paris, in my opinion are the "hottest" - to quote the husband - and most style conscious.  

If you have never visited either city, I recommend that you do so.  There are economic ways to do so, including looking for discount flights, sharing an apartment with friends, using travel cards as we have to get around freely, and getting a "London Pass" or the "Museum Pass" for Paris which saves a considerable amount of money - the London Pass even got us free rail travel to Windsor Castle.

I'm not sure when I will return to either city, but I suspect I will see both again, especially Paris.  As for blogging tomorrow, we head to the airport in the morning and then need to drive back to Hampton after we arrive in Washington Dulles International.  Post will be sparse at best.

Paris 2018: Day 1 and Day 2

Plaza Athenee from Avenue Montangne

Plaza Athenne - Cour Jardin

Looking up from the Cour Jardin

Our arrival in Paris was delayed due the closure of Dulles International on Saturday evening due to severe thunderstorms which closed the airport for roughly 2 hours and 20 minutes.  The result was that we missed out connection in London to Paris and had to catch a flight 3 hours latter than planned.  Our apartment on Rue de Perche is a wonderful two bedroom, two bath apartment in a early 1800's building a block from the Picasso Museum. We spent our first afternoon walking around the Marais and end up having dinner at Vito's, a restaurant that at lest on Sundays is the equivalent of Annie's in the Dupont Circle area of Washington, DC.   We ended the evening with a nightcap at Raid Bar on Rue du Temple, a gay bar.  

Yesterday, we had a lazy morning and then had lunch at the elegant and opulent Hotel Plaza Athenee, a hotel I stayed at frequently during my days as in-house counsel for an oil company.  While extravagant, it was my "thank you" treat to our friends who treated the husband and I to this trip where we are the trip planners and tour guides. We followed that with a stroll up Avenue George V and then the Champs Elysse to the Arch de Triomphe.  We rounded out the afternoon with a visit to a favorite men's boutique on Rue de Rivoli back in the Marais (I bought two sport coats). 

Reduced Posting - Paris Here We Come

The husband and I are headed to Paris with friends.  We drive to Dulles International and then will fly to London on Virgin Atlantic and connect on Air France to Paris.  We will spend a week in Paris followed by a week in London.  Posting will be reduced for the next day or so while we travel, but I will post about our experiences as is my normal habit.  On the home front, the house sitter/dog sitter is all arranged.  This will be our friends' first trip to either city so the husband and I have served as trip planners and will be the tour guides, if you will. We kick of Paris with lunch at the Plaza Athenee where I staid many times in my days as in-house counsel.  Bon voyage! 

Plaza Athenee courtyard restaurant.

Terrorism Makes Foreign Travel an Imperative not a Luxury

Paris - 2015.

While more and more Americans are traveling abroad and per a relatively recent BBC article indicates that roughly 50% of Americans now have passports, the percentage is far lower than for many Europeans.  In the UK, for example, only 17% of British citizens do not have passports. The consequence, in my view, is that far too many Americans have less empathy for others than their European counterparts.  Indeed, in the age of Trump, his base doesn't even have empathy for broad segments of other Americans, which poisons both the social and political reality in America.  A piece in Salon  argues that today it is more important than ever for Americans and others to travel abroad.  It lessens the "us v. them" mindset so favored by the far right and, in my view, makes one understand that there are equally legitimate other perspectives.  In September, the husband and I will be in Paris - perhaps my favorite city in the world - for a week, followed by a week in London traveling with friends. Both are cities that have suffered terrorist attacks. We will be staying in apartments rather than hotels and will immerse ourselves in experiencing the people as well as the sights. Here are excerpts from Salon: 

As attacks destroy lives around the world in an endless loop it's easy to grow numb. Watching the aftermath of yet another bombing unfold on a little screen, maybe we'll change our Facebook profile photo or join a hashtag movement. But do we feel anything? Maybe sympathy, or, if it's particularly awful by the new and ever steeper scale of such things, we feel a little horror. It's surreal, far away, not related to us. Unless, that is, we've been there.

This probably isn't unusual, but I've been to multiple places that were later attacked by terrorists. First was a restaurant overlooking Marrakech's Djemaa El Fna square. . . . Two years later I saw the news: A bomb attack destroyed the restaurant and killed 15 people, most of them tourists.

Bookending that trip we strolled Las Ramblas in Barcelona. Three years later, men with guns and bombs killed dozens and injured hundreds at the airport. Four years later (nearly to the day), terrorists plowed through crowds in the busy Barcelona promenade, killing more than a dozen people and injuring at least a hundred.

And in the fall of 2015 I sat down to a solo dinner at Le Petit Cambodge in Paris. Paris is the home of my heart, and days after my meal there the news broke: as part of their concerted attacks across the city, terrorists had transformed the bright and happy place into a bloodbath.

Unlike when I hear a news report of a faraway tragedy, these instances — but most especially the one in Paris — struck hard. . . . I could imagine — in vivid color — the men with assault rifles, and the people laughing and eating and loving life one moment and in a waking nightmare the next. Not only because it could have  been me, but because these were people I knew, no matter how fleetingly.

What did I learn? In short: Absolutely, those connections matter. And maybe far less interaction is needed  than we'd ever think. “About all you need is that minute where you're waiting for a bus,” Professor Goodman said.

He offered a brief primer. The foundations of a successful relationship according to social science, he explained, boil down to honesty, acceptance and empathy. And in some situations, those things can happen in moments.

When we travel, Goodman noted, the usual process of forming relationships is often sped up. (Think of the things you may have overshared with a stranger on a plane!) And when you're a “foreigner,” he pointed out, you give yourself permission to ask questions. So at a bus stop or in a restaurant far from home you can form what we could call a micro-relationship.

Why would that little bit of connection that has some of the elements of a long important relationship, why did that stick in your mind? Because it begins to touch on these basic human elements that we need to survive,” Goodman said. Where we don't have answers, he said, is why. “Science doesn't quite know why it's so important to us to have the experience to be understood.”

But the fact remains that it is crucial to us as humans. And while some may urge that we stay home where we're safe (as if that were true), I want to travel more than ever. For every micro-relationship two people from different parts of the globe can form, that's an added dimension to the bond holding all of us together. Maybe a bond as ephemeral as a spiderweb, but maybe as strong, as well. And the more that hate tears us apart, the more of those bonds we need if we're to keep surviving.

As for my horror-overlaid memories of Le Petit Cambodge, I had to rewrite them. In the aftermath of the attacks I vowed I wouldn't travel anywhere else until I could revisit the restaurant. And I didn't. A year and a half later an assignment took me to France, beginning with a night in Paris. . . . . I arrived at  Le Petit Cambodge first. Now, this trip, it was spring and daylight, not fall and dark. Every seat along the sidewalk was taken, every diner as unattainably chic as ever.

The horror didn't disappear, exactly. But it faded to something like the ghost of an imprint left on tracing paper as Agnès and I ate and talked of normal things — well, as normal as buying a castle, as she'd just done, can be. She asked for a to-go container, something I'd never have the nerve to do in Paris, but she wanted leftovers for the chickens at her new place in the country. Her exchange with the waitress was in French, and I don't remember it. I hope she doesn't have to.

It saddens me that so many Americans lack a shred of empathy for others and cannot see beyond the color of one's skin, one's country of origin, one's native language or one's sexual orientation.  In the age of Trump and his pandering to Christofascists, all of us must strive to oppose this toxicity. 

A Great Memory: What it Was Like to Fly the Concorde

Believe it or not, I do read things that don't relate to politics or LGBT rights and activism.  And I came across a piece in CNN yesterday that was fun for me because it looked at something that I actually did back in my days as in-house counsel for an oil company: I flew the Concorde.  It was in August, 1981, after a 10 day negotiating trip to Morocco.   I was already in Morocco with three other company representatives when the air traffic controller strike hit and air travel became a chaotic nightmare to and from and within the USA.  We generally flew first class on overseas trips at company, but the Concorde was off limits under normal circumstances.  Under the circumstances, the Concorde offered the assured way to be sure we got back to America.  The Moroccan government made the reservations for our party and few flew from Casablanca to Paris, spent the night at the always fabulous Plaza Athenee - perhaps my favorite hotel in the world - and then took Concord to New York City, leaving Paris at 12:00 noon and arriving in New York around 8:30 am.  We maintained Mach 2 all the way across the Atlantic Ocean.  As the CNN piece notes, it truly was something special (I still my boarding pass holder and the menu - each flight had a unique menu).  Here are some article highlights (check out the 28 photos in the article): 

In 1976 -- over 40 years ago -- elite passengers were crossing the Atlantic in under three and a half hours, flying at twice the speed of sound in the Anglo-French Concorde.

Only 20 of the sleek, delta-winged SSTs were built, and just 14 were delivered to two airlines -- seven each to Air France and British Airways.

With superlative service and cuisine, exclusive airport lounges and stratospherically high airfares, Concorde passengers flew far above other flights, and cruised faster than fighter jets to their destinations.

But what was it really like to rub shoulders with the rich and famous on a Concorde flight? CNN Travel asked some former passengers.

"The flight attendants loved being on it; the passengers loved being on it," says CNN's Richard Quest, who flew Concorde five times. "You were aware of being part of a very small group of people that were privileged enough to be on Concorde.

With an interior fuselage width of about eight and a half feet (2.63 meters), Concorde's cabin was just wider than that of today's Bombardier Regional Jet. The SST had a single aisle, with a two-two seating configuration.

"The quality and style of food service was exceptional, . . . . "I felt more strongly that I had entered a private club. It was a brief glimpse into a life I had not known, polite, considerate, and beautifully detailed. It was impossible to not feel spoiled, and valued," says Ford.

Concorde was the first -- and still only -- passenger aircraft that had turbojet engines with afterburners. Called "reheat" by the British, raw fuel was introduced into the exhaust of the plane's four engines, immediately increasing the engines' thrust by almost 20%.

"Each takeoff was a phenomenal experience, the performance such that we had to warn the passengers in advance what to expect. The roar of the Rolls-Royce Olympus engines, combined with being pushed back into your seat, was like no other civilian aeroplane."

Reheat was also used to push the plane from subsonic to supersonic speeds.

Cruising at Mach 2 -- or 1,350 mph -- at 60,000 feet, Concorde flew five miles above and 800 mph faster than the subsonic 747s plodding across the Atlantic.

While Concorde no longer takes to the skies, it can be visited at a number of aviation museums around the world.

It truly was an experience that I will never forget.  I can still close my eyes and recall the takeoff and the steep pitch of the plane as it gained altitude with the afterburners fully engaged.  

My boarding pass holder

The menu cover

The Plaza Athenee - Paris

Why the Brussels Attack Could Backfire for ISIS

While the extremists of ISIS want to depict their atrocities and genocide as a battle to protect Islam from the western world - and by extension, modernity, which threatens its Medieval religious dogma - some believes it attacks on the West, most recently in Brussels, could backfire.  Indeed, while ISIS wants a war of civilizations for recruitment purposes, if it gets its wish and the West unifies and becomes more willing to use military force, ISIS losses in the Middle East could well increase.  A piece in Slate looks at how ISIS may be unwittingly sowing the seeds for its ultimate destruction. Here are excerpts:

On the surface, the gains of an international attack like Brussels outweigh the risks. For a highly ideological group like ISIS, the Belgian deaths strike a blow to the West, fulfilling the group’s mission of taking the battle to the enemies of Islam. And such attacks counter the considerable losses the Islamic State has taken in Iraq and Syria.

Such battlefield losses move the Islamic State ever further from “consolidating and expanding” the dystopian state it hopes to build. Since declaring a caliphate in 2014, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and other ISIS leaders have trumpeted their creation of a state. And by taking over an area the size of Great Britain, they’ve achieved more than any other modern jihadi group. Military losses make a mockery of this claim and strengthen the appeal of its al-Qaida rival, which has criticized the declaration as premature. As the state shrinks rather than expands, ISIS must show its followers it is fighting.

Indeed, spectacular and bloody attacks like Brussels can win the group recruits in both Europe and the Arab world. A small but significant portion of European Muslims feel alienated and bitter toward their home countries, and the recriminations and stepped-up security after each attack make this problem worse. More than 5,000 European Muslims have traveled to Syria to fight with ISIS and other jihadis. 

Going international, however, often works out poorly for terrorist groups. Algerian terrorists in the 1990s found that attacks in France backfired, leading a once-skeptical West to favor the Algerian regime and increase France’s support for the government the terrorists were fighting. ISIS may discover similar problems. For one, the more global the threat, the more likely it is to grab the attention of the United States and its potent military and intelligence services. Jihadis not affiliated with al-Qaida criticized Osama Bin Laden after 9/11 because it led to U.S. intervention into what had once been local struggles and also greatly expanded aid to governments in the Middle East. As the jihadi strategist Abu Musab al-Suri lamented, the 9/11 attacks cast “jihadists into a fiery furnace … A hellfire which consumed most of their leaders, fighters, and bases.” 

The Obama administration has moved cautiously in Iraq and Syria so far, but each attack in the West increases, or at least sustains, pressure on U.S. leaders to step up. It also makes it more likely that the West will target Islamic State provinces in places like Libya and Sinai, even when the group is not currently targeting Europe or the United States: Better to hit them hard than wait too long will be the thinking. 

The attacks also lead to further security crackdowns on jihadi networks in Europe. Such losses do more than hinder the Islamic State’s ability to do future terrorist attacks. The group relies heavily on foreign fighters for its military operations, and crackdowns on its European network reduce an important source of suicide bombers and other operatives.

Because of these likely Western responses, the Islamic State’s international attacks risk substituting tactical gain for strategic loss. Attacks in the West will set back the Islamic State’s state-building imperative, in particular. Strikes in Brussels or other Western cities will hurt the Islamic State’s enemies and excite its followers but will not lead the group to victory.

ISIS' Cynical Use of Religious Extremism to Serve its Secular Objectives

Like many other groups throughout history the leadership of ISIS is using religious fervor - think of the Crusades and how the Catholic Church and European monarchs preyed on the religiosity of their respective subjects as but one example - and extremism to further totally secular goals of seizing power and controlling territory.  Yes, some may actually believe the poison they spew, but most likely use the guise of religion to recruit followers who can be used as canon fodder and/or recruited for suicide missions.  Normal, sane individuals are generally not inclined to blow themselves up with bombs, but religious zealots and those they have brainwashed are another matter. A piece in The Nation looks at this horrible cynicism and the secular goals ISIS is pursuing under the smoke screen of religion.  Here are highlights:

Terrorist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda are widely seen as being motivated by their radical theology. But according to Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago and founder of the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism, this view is too simplistic. Pape knows his subject; he and his colleagues have studied every suicide attack in the world since 1980, evaluating over 4,600 in all.

He says that religious fervor is not a motive unto itself. Rather, it serves as a tool for recruitment and a potent means of getting people to overcome their fear of death and natural aversion to killing innocents. “Very often, suicide attackers realize they have instincts for self-preservation that they have to overcome,” and religious beliefs are often part of that process, said Pape in an appearance on my radio show, Politics and Reality Radio, last week.

According to Pape’s research, underlying the outward expressions of religious fervor, ISIS’s goals, like those of most terrorist groups, are distinctly earthly:

What 95 percent of all suicide attacks have in common, since 1980, is not religion, but a specific strategic motivation to respond to a military intervention, often specifically a military occupation, of territory that the terrorists view as their homeland or prize greatly. From Lebanon and the West Bank in the 80s and 90s, to Iraq and Afghanistan, and up through the Paris suicide attacks we’ve just experienced in the last days, military intervention—and specifically when the military

This view differs from that of Hillary Clinton and others who believe that ISIS “has nothing whatsoever to do” with Islam, as well as the more common belief, articulated by Graeme Wood in The Atlantic, that ISIS can be reduced to “a religious group with carefully considered beliefs.” It’s a group whose outward expressions of religious fervor serve its secular objectives of controlling resources and territory. Virtually all of the group’s leaders were once high-ranking officers in Iraq’s secular military.

Pape’s analysis is consistent with what Lydia Wilson found when she interviewed captured ISIS fighters in Iraq. “They are woefully ignorant about Islam and have difficulty answering questions about Sharia law, militant jihad, and the caliphate,” she recently wrote in The Nation. “But a detailed, or even superficial, knowledge of Islam isn’t necessarily relevant to the ideal of fighting for an Islamic State, as we have seen from the Amazon order of Islam for Dummies by one British fighter bound for ISIS.”

Pape says that it’s important to distinguish between ISIS’s long-term goals and its shorter-term strategies to achieve them:

It’s about the timing. How are you going to get the United States, France and other major powers to truly abandon and withdraw from the Persian Gulf when they have such a large interest in oil? A single attack isn’t going to do it. Bin Laden did 9/11 hoping that it would suck a large American ground army into Afghanistan, which would help recruit a large number of suicide attackers to punish America for intervening. We didn’t do that – we used very limited military force in Afghanistan. But what Bin Laden didn’t count on was that we would send a large ground army into Iraq to knock Saddam out. And that turned out to be the most potent recruiting ground for anti-American terrorists that ever was, more so than Bin Laden had ever hoped for in his wildest dreams.

Another theory holds that ISIS—and Al Qaeda—set their sights on France in order to polarize mainstream French society against its Muslim community. As University of Michigan historian Juan Cole put it after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, “The problem for a terrorist group like Al Qaeda is that its recruitment pool is Muslims, but most Muslims are not interested in terrorism. Most Muslims are not even interested in politics, much less political Islam.” In Cole’s formulation, if violent Islamic fundamentalists “can get non-Muslim French to be beastly to ethnic Muslims on the grounds that they are Muslims, it can start creating a common political identity around grievance against discrimination.”   Pape says this analysis is also consistent with his research.

In Pape’s view, most of the conventional wisdom about what terrorists want to achieve is wrong, and that disconnect has limited the effectiveness of the West’s response to terrorism.

While far more horrible and violent, what ISIS is doing is but a variation of what the GOP has done for years now: using religious extremism and zealotry to rally ignorant voters - especially in the Bible Belt - to support Republican candidates who profess to honor "Christian values."  Like the captured ISIS fighters mentioned in the article, most right wing Christians are woefully ignorant about the Bible and church history.  Like their Muslim counterparts, they are played as fools and manipulated and encouraged to define themselves by hate and bigotry - and sometimes violence.

GOP Civil War Looming as Trump Slides Toward Fascism?

As Donald Trumps slides increasingly down a path that makes one think of Adolph Hitler and/or Benito Mussolini and outright fascism, New Day For America PAC, which supports John Kasich, has launched a new ad that is displayed above that has assembled some of Donald Trump’s more extreme and vile statements. (Another source has fact checked and found that the majority of "facts" that Trump cites are not true). New Day for America is reporting that Trump is already threatening to sue them.  Meanwhile, a piece in The Week looks at The Donald's slide toward fascism.  Here are some highlights:

I made the case just a couple months back that Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump is a sort of fledgling Mussolini, nurturing an incipient fascist movement. As the first primaries approach, and Trump's lead in the polls is actually widening, his development toward outright fascism is progressing faster than I feared.

As of August, Trump had most of the ingredients for a fascist movement: the victim complex, the fervent nationalism, the obsession with national purity and cleansing purges, and the cult of personality. He was missing the organized violence, a left-wing challenge strong enough to push traditional conservative elites into his camp, support for wars of aggression, and a full-bore attack on democracy itself. He's made much progress on all but the last one.

It's clear now that the Paris attacks enormously energized the Trumpist movement. He's now speculating openly about invading Syria. Trump's proposals have gone from overt prejudice to things literally taken out of late Weimar history — closure of mosques and a national Muslim database. The rank-and-file have both fed off and stoked this behavior. When a lone protester started chanting "black lives matter" at a Trump rally, Trumpists jumped him (he was luckily not badly injured).  Trump later said, "Maybe he should have been roughed up." Hours later he lied about witnessing Muslim crowds celebrating 9/11, and retweeted nonsense racist garbage from a literal neo-Nazi.

Conditions are clearly fertile to start organizing a Trumpist paramilitary wing, a key fascist institution.  . . . . With an incomprehensible number of guns floating around the country, all Trump needs is a Röhm to get the organizing started — except probably with Carhartts and camouflage instead of imitation military uniforms.

Will other decent Republicans (those few that are left) join Kasich and call Trump out?  One can only hope so.

Is Ben Carson Finally (and Belatedly) Finished?

The 2016 GOP presidential nominee clown car continues to be a train wreck and a frightening one at that.  The good news? Ben Carson, the GOP's idiot savant du jour, seems to finally falling in the polls.  Between being utterly unqualified for the presidency and faced with increased scrutiny in the wake of the Paris terror attacks, GOP voters apparently are belatedly realizing that Carson has no business in the White House or any elected office.  The scary part is that a significant number of Republicans are either so stupid or crazy (or both) that Carson ever rose to second place in numerous polls.  A piece in Salon looks at what we can only hope is the beginning of Carson's implosion.  Here are highlights:

Ben Carson has had a great run. He has no experience, no knowledge of the issues, and no real inclination to learn the things he has to learn in order to run for office. In every debate so far, he’s embarrassed himself with meandering non-answers. Oftentimes it’s not clear Carson even understands the question he’s been asked, and that’s pretty much the case across topics.

Remarkably, none of that has mattered in this race. Carson has slithered his way to the top of the polls in recent months, and he appeared well-positioned at least until the Iowa caucuses. Carson’s only real competition thus far has been Trump.
But things have changed.   It appears the recent terrorist attacks in Paris have awakened GOP primary voters from their slumber – well, sort of. And that’s bad news for Carson, who just had one of his worst weeks as a presidential candidate. In case you missed it, Carson stumbled last week when he mistakenly claimed that China was militarily involved in Syria. He then failed to name the nations he would ask to join a coalition against ISIS.

Things spiraled further out of control for the retired neurosurgeon when his own foreign policy adviser questioned his understanding of and interest in the issues.

Even in a party that devalues experience and champions know-nothingism, this is a potential death knell for Carson’s campaign.

The attacks in Paris, for better or worse, have pushed national security and foreign policy to the top of the Republican agenda. Discussions about ISIS and Syria and Iraq will dominate the debate for the foreseeable future. Carson sounds like a fatuous gasbag on virtually all topics save for neuroscience, but he’s especially bad on foreign policy.

And his numbers are starting to reflect that.  A NBC poll released last week shows that Trump has solidified his frontrunner spot in the wake of Paris, mostly because of his openly fascistic calls to surveil Mosques, reinstate waterboarding, and register all Muslims in a “database.” Carson, however, who was tied with Trump as recently as two weeks ago, has dropped 8 points and is now tied with Ted Cruz at 18 percent.

Things look worse for Carson in Iowa, where his evangelical base is most concentrated. A report by Politico over the weekend confirms that Carson is in trouble. The terror attacks have changed the conversation, and Carson is the obvious loser. “He’s a great guy, he’s fun to listen to, but I didn’t hear anything substantive,” said one Iowa-based GOP voter, who now ranks national security as an “extremely high” priority.

Carson’s downward slide is likely to continue in the coming weeks. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and it’s too late to pretend otherwise. Unlike Trump, who at least has an obnoxious but successful tough guy shtick, Carson’s nice guy routine won’t play well in this political climate.

All of this is great news for Ted Cruz. Cruz doesn’t have any meaningful foreign policy experience, but he is an active U.S. Senator and, more importantly, he’s quite good at sounding like he knows what he’s talking about. His rhetorical gifts will serve him well in this debate. Cruz can pander to Christians as well or better than Carson, and he knows it. Having some actual experience as a politician will make him far more appealing to conservatives in Iowa and elsewhere who want their foreign policy bravado served with a dash of religious lunacy.

Donald Trump, Fear Mongering and the GOP

I often note that those who fail to know history are doomed to repeat it.  If one looks at today's Republican Party and especially the party's candidates for the presidential nomination, it feels almost like Germany in the early 1930's when the Nazis used fear and claims of conspiracies to convince Germans to give away their civil rights.  Hitler had his Jews and communists to blame for the nation's ills.  Now we see Donald Trump using Hispanics and Muslims - others in the party use gays and "liberals" - to fear monger all with the goal of gaining power.  And frighteningly, most American's do not seem to see what is happening.  A piece in Salon looks at the disturbing parallels.  Here are highlights:

“Paris attack should end criticism of ‘militarization’ of police. NYPD getting ready.” So said the neocon historian Max Boot on Twitter over the weekend, with a link to a New York Times report on the formation of a “standing counterterrorism force” within the NYPD. “After the next attack, the pundits will say ‘This should end your criticism of the government,'” quipped Salon’s Ben Norton.

We’ve been down this road plenty of times before. By now, it’s easy to predict how human beings will react to unexpected attacks like the ones in Paris. Of all human emotions, fear may be the most contagious, and the terrorists know this well. . . . . Of course, fear is a invaluable emotion that prevents human beings from acting recklessly or just plain stupid, but it can quickly become irrational and dangerous — and in many cases, it is a gift to authoritarian politicians.

The infamous Reichstag fire of 1933, which Adolf Hitler called a “sign from God,” is a prime example of how useful fear can be for aspiring dictators. . . . . The day after the fire, Hitler was granted the Reichstag Fire Decree by the German President, Paul von Hindenburg, which suspended many civil liberties and provided Hitler with greater emergency powers as Chancellor. Thousands of communists were arrested, and in the Reichstag elections during the following month, the Nazis gained enough of a majority to pass the “Enabling Act,” which gave Hitler a de facto dictatorship, providing him with the power to enact all laws without parliament. With the scapegoating of Jews, communists, and other minorities, the Nazis managed to further their power, and provide enemies to the people in times of economic desperation.

Today, Republicans and neocons like to invoke the Nazis when discussing Islamic extremism, yet, as the past week has illustrated, these same politicians are the ones who most resemble their fascist forefathers. In July, I wrote about the worrisome parallels between Trump’s rhetoric and that of fascism, and what it says about the modern Republican party. The likeness has become even more disturbing after the terrorist attacks in Paris. Trump has always had the strong man attitude of a fascist. 

The racism and nativism of the Trump campaign (and his competition) is even more disquieting. His anti-Mexican rhetoric has been a cornerstone of his campaign, and now, after the Paris attacks and with the Syrian refugee crisis, anti-Muslim rhetoric has taken hold.

Just as the Nazi’s used the Reichstag fire to their advantage, creating fear of a communist conspiracy (which was nonexistent), Republicans have used the atrocities in Paris as a campaign tool, crafting various conspiracy theories about sleeper cell refugees and anti-West Muslims looking to implement Sharia law in Cleveland, Ohio. Ultimately, this is what fascism was (is) all about: manufacturing and spreading fear. Fear of some foreign ideology invading and destroying a countries traditions, or as Umberto Eco (who grew up in fascist Italy) calls it in is essay, “Ur-Fascism,” the “fear of difference.” There also tends to be a fear (or obsession) of some kind of conspiratorial plot against them.

Fear is a very powerful weapon indeed. Sometimes, it is enough for the majority of citizens to willingly give up civil liberties, or to stop criticizing the militarization of the police, or to become bigoted against those who look different to them. It was certainly strong enough fourteen years ago, when the Patriot Act was signed into law one month after the attacks of 9/11. And the Islamic State is counting on it to be strong enough this time around as well. They are especially counting on European and American nationalists and sympathizers to make the lives of Muslim immigrants and citizens miserable enough (perhaps by making them register in a database?) to make them sympathize with anti-West Islamic fanatics. 

Both Islamic and Western fascists want a clash of civilizations, and they play into each others hands. ISIS creates mass panic and provide politicians like Donald Trump the perfect political tool of fear, while Trump and his GOP cohorts create a toxic anti-Muslim atmosphere that ends up creating more recruits for ISIS, or as President Obama said, “I cannot think of a more potent recruitment tool for ISIL than some of the rhetoric coming out of here in the course of this debate.”

Just a month ago, it would have been hard to imagine the GOP primary becoming even more toxic, but ISIS helped make it happen. Even worse, Trump has made a comeback in the polls, and is now around ten points ahead of his next competition.

After the Reichstag fire, Hitler made the following remark about the communists: “These sub-humans do not understand how the people stand at our side. In their mouse-holes, out of which they now want to come, of course they hear nothing of the cheering of the masses.” Let us hope the people, the masses, are smart enough to reject the fear and intolerance that the GOP has made its prime selling point.

Saudi Arabia - The Other ISIS

With the 24/7 chatter - and in the case of Republicans, verbal diarrhea - about terrorism and the threat of Islamic extremists, there is sadly near total silence on the role that wealthy citizens of Saudi Arabia (and perhaps even the government) have played in funding Islamic extremism around the world.  Similarly, there is very little discussion of the fact that within that country, human rights abuses are rampant and many of the Medieval practices of ISIS are the norm.  In my view, until Saudi Arabia is forced to either join the civilized world, expect the extremism to continue.  Will America and other western nations have the guts to confront Saudi Arabia?  Probably not because of one thing: oil. Energy independence, especially renewable energy sources, should be a national security issue and America and its western allies need to push for the day when the Saudis will be irrelevant and can no longer get a free pass on human rights abuses and other extremist policies.  An op-ed in the New York Times looks at the similarities between Saudi Arabia and ISIS.  Here are highlights:

Black Daesh, white Daesh. The former slits throats, kills, stones, cuts off hands, destroys humanity’s common heritage and despises archaeology, women and non-Muslims. The latter is better dressed and neater but does the same things. The Islamic State; Saudi Arabia. In its struggle against terrorism, the West wages war on one, but shakes hands with the other. This is a mechanism of denial, and denial has a price: preserving the famous strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia at the risk of forgetting that the kingdom also relies on an alliance with a religious clergy that produces, legitimizes, spreads, preaches and defends Wahhabism, the ultra-puritanical form of Islam that Daesh feeds on.

Wahhabism, a messianic radicalism that arose in the 18th century, hopes to restore a fantasized caliphate centered on a desert, a sacred book, and two holy sites, Mecca and Medina. Born in massacre and blood, it manifests itself in a surreal relationship with women, a prohibition against non-Muslims treading on sacred territory, and ferocious religious laws. 

The West’s denial regarding Saudi Arabia is striking: It salutes the theocracy as its ally but pretends not to notice that it is the world’s chief ideological sponsor of Islamist culture. The younger generations of radicals in the so-called Arab world were not born jihadists. They were suckled in the bosom of Fatwa Valley, a kind of Islamist Vatican with a vast industry that produces theologians, religious laws, books, and aggressive editorial policies and media campaigns.

The Saudi royals are caught in a perfect trap: Weakened by succession laws that encourage turnover, they cling to ancestral ties between king and preacher. The Saudi clergy produces Islamism, which both threatens the country and gives legitimacy to the regime.

It is worth reading certain Islamist newspapers to see their reactions to the attacks in Paris. The West is cast as a land of “infidels.” The attacks were the result of the onslaught against Islam. Muslims and Arabs have become the enemies of the secular and the Jews. The Palestinian question is invoked along with the rape of Iraq and the memory of colonial trauma, and packaged into a messianic discourse meant to seduce the masses. Such talk spreads in the social spaces below, while up above, political leaders send their condolences to France and denounce a crime against humanity. This totally schizophrenic situation parallels the West’s denial regarding Saudi Arabia.

All of which leaves one skeptical of Western democracies’ thunderous declarations regarding the necessity of fighting terrorism. Their war can only be myopic, for it targets the effect rather than the cause. Since ISIS is first and foremost a culture, not a militia, how do you prevent future generations from turning to jihadism when the influence of Fatwa Valley and its clerics and its culture and its immense editorial industry remains intact?

Jihadism is denounced as the scourge of the century but no consideration is given to what created it or supports it. This may allow saving face, but not saving lives.  Daesh has a mother: the invasion of Iraq. But it also has a father: Saudi Arabia and its religious-industrial complex. Until that point is understood, battles may be won, but the war will be lost. 

Jihadists will be killed, only to be reborn again in future generations and raised on the same books.  The attacks in Paris have exposed this contradiction again, but as happened after 9/11, it risks being erased from our analyses and our consciences.

Until either (i) Saudi Arabia's oil becomes irrelevant and its power to blackmail is ended, or (ii) that nation is forced into modernity and Islamic extremism condemned and its clerics denied power, don't expect things to get better.  The root of the evil is ignorance embracing and hatred inspiring religion.  Be it fundamentalist Christianity or fundamentalist Islam, both are evils that need  to be eradicated from the face of the earth.  Look across history and there is one constant evil inflaming hate, discrimination and murder: religion.

 

GOP Goes Off the Rails After Paris Attack

Since the beginning of the Republican presidential contest we have seen the would be presidential nominees - and many others in the GOP - seeking to play and pander to every prejudice and fear and the religious extremism of the party base.  Much of this effort has involved dog whistle calls supporting white supremacy and the Christofascists' demands for special rights and false claims of persecution and their abject fear of modernity itself and what they perceive to be lost white privilege.  The attacks in Paris last week have sent the party base and the pandering political whores into overdrive.  A piece in Salon looks at the phenomenon as well as the hypocrisy of the supposed "godly folk."  Here are some highlights:

Last week, the biggest story in conservative circles had to do with Starbucks’ decision to issue coffee cups in plain red and green holiday colors rather than festooning them with Christmas-based imagery. This week, conservatives are howling over the potential for Syrian refugees to be granted entry into the United States.

There’s an idea floating around social media that perfectly illustrates how these two stories correlate: Odd how the GOP was so enraged by Starbucks cups that excluded the religious significance of Christmas — a holiday founded on the story of refugees looking for shelter — and yet they don’t mind denying a “room at the inn” for countless other Middle East families. So much for the religious significance of Christmas when there’s inchoate fear to indulge!

[I]n the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris, Republicans are further entrenching against admitting refugees into the U.S. because there might — might! — be an ISIS terrorist disguising himself as a Syrian escaping his nation’s civil war.

It’s yet another example of how the GOP almost always drops the ball when it comes to serious solutions to complicated problems. Let’s review:

• Spectacular al-Qaida attacks using airplanes crashing into buildings? Invade and occupy Iraq, even though al-Qaida didn’t operate there — although they sure have done so since the invasion — postwar — and even though Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11.

• A terrorist attack against our consulate in Benghazi resulting in four American deaths? Investigate it with more vigor and outrage than a terrorist attack that resulted in 3,000 American deaths.

• A voter fraud rate of about 0.0002 percent? Disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Americans (mostly Democrats) with Jim Crow-style Voter ID laws.

The list goes on and on.

In this case, Republicans ranging from Fox News demagogues to the governors of Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, . . . . New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin have pledged to disallow Syrian refugees from having a proverbial “room at the inn.”

Of course we learned that governors don’t have the authority to ban refugees from their states. In other words, states have no authority over the federal government when it comes to immigration policy. The Supreme Court ruled in Hines v. Davidowitz: “The supremacy of the national power in the general field of foreign affairs, including power over immigration, naturalization and deportation, is made clear by the Constitution.”

Then again, the GOP is increasingly ruled by states’ rights zealots who routinely posture about ignoring Supreme Court rulings such as the one legalizing same-sex marriage, so it’ll come as no surprise to see Bobby Jindal and Greg Abbott inveighing against admitting refugees, given the opportunity.

The GOP is obviously pandering to the racist tendencies of its base. Like always. And those tendencies demand validation. If the yokels believe the Syrian refugees are harboring ISIS sleeper cells, then they clearly are. Facts be damned.

And while Republicans from Donald Trump to AM radio screechers market in the specious connection between incidents of gun violence or terrorism and locations with strict gun laws, it’s worth noting that between 2004 and 2014, 2,000 terrorists from the FBI’s watch list were able to successfully purchase firearms in the United States, thanks to the GOP and its salacious love affair with the National Rifle Association. . . . . Rep. Tony Dale (R) strongly opposes allowing refugees into his state. Why? Because it’s too easy to buy guns there.

But what about any other would-be terrorists? Texas welcomes you. Thanks, Rep. Dale, for telegraphing Texas’ easy availability of firearms to any terrorist who wants them. Smart. By the way, according to a study by the New America Foundation, most terrorists inside the U.S. are white Americans.

Almost twice as many people have died in attacks by right-wing groups in America than have died in attacks by Muslim extremists. Of the 26 attacks since 9/11 that the group defined as terror, 19 were carried out by non-Muslims.

None of this is to suggest the threat from ISIS should be taken lightly. . . . . there’s a smart way to pursue this goal, and there’s a really dumb, scattershot way of doing it. The GOP is busily showing us the latter by randomly demonizing innocent Syrian refugees, even though 51 percent are children under 17. Someone should find out how many unborn Syrians are among the refugees. Surely if most of the refugees were fetuses under the age of 17 weeks, the GOP would stumble over its own feet to rescue them. The birthed ones are, sadly, on their own.

If the circumstances surrounding Paris weren’t so utterly tragic, the GOP’s flailing, nonsensical reaction to the attack and to the ongoing refugee crisis would be almost as hilarious as its reaction to the stupid Starbucks cup design.