thenation--2020-07-28--America Doesn’t Deserve to Have Baseball Back

Baseball is my favorite sport .
I know that ’ s weird since I ’ m a Black guy under the age of 80 , but it is what it is .
I ’ m one of those guys who can pound out “ baseball is an allegory for the American experience ” takes like a hitter spraying singles to all fields .
Last week , on July 24 , baseball reopened amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic .
That ’ s what I love about the game .
Even in the midst of a national crisis , leave it to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just how stupid and greedy this country has become .
As of this writing , 14 Miami Marlins—12 players and two coaches—have tested positive for the coronavirus .
The news forced Miami to cancel its home opener against the Baltimore Orioles .
The Marlins started the season on the road , in Philadelphia against the Phillies .
The Phillies postponed their Monday night game against the New York Yankees after the Marlins news .
Major League Baseball decided to open the season without fans in the stands .
But it did little to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to wear masks on the field , but not required to , and most didn ’ t .
The dugouts were extended into the stands , but there were still lots of people packed fairly close together in the dugouts , with haphazard mask use .
And a walk-off grand slam still produced an awkward , maskless pig pile at home plate in Oakland during the As ’ first game of the season .
Baseball is the most socially distant of the major American team sports , but players can ’ t stay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And that ’ s just on the field .
Off the field , MLB took few of the precautions implemented by other sports leagues .
The NBA , for instance , which is planning on restarting next week , has opted to protect its players by creating a “ bubble ” around them .
All games will take place at a massive training facility in Orlando , Fla. Players , coaches , and staff are tested before being allowed into the bubble , and they can leave only with a special dispensation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bubble has holes .
Over the weekend , a player for the Los Angeles Clippers , Lou Williams , was granted leave from the bubble to attend a funeral .
But rapper Jack Harlow posted a picture of Williams at an Atlanta strip club , because , well , I guess everybody processes grief differently .
Williams is now quarantined for 10 days , but the point is that without Harlow accidentally outing his boy , officials might have never known that Williams violated protocol to go to a flesh joint .
At @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has no bubble .
The games take place at the home stadiums of the various teams , which means teams have to travel around the country to play .
The Toronto Blue Jays have no “ home ” games this year , because the Canadian government decided that the entire plan was unnecessarily risky and barred baseball from returning to Canada .
Canada is allowing hockey to resume .
Teams will be operating within two “ bubbles ” to play all of their games : one in Edmonton and one in Toronto .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ or Toronto are objecting to live sports ; they ’ re objecting to the specific plan MLB has put in place to play them .
Instead of following the models of the NBA or NHL , MLB seems to be trying to replicate the model of the English Premier League .
Soccer teams in the EPL did travel to the home stadiums of their opponents .
But the EPL took extensive measures to lock down the teams while traveling .
All players and staff were tested twice a week .
Perhaps most important @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the day of the game , and travel home that night .
This avoided hotel stays and extended downtime during which players could get themselves into trouble .
You can ’ t do that with baseball .
Teams play almost every day , not a couple of days a week as in the other sports leagues .
And teams play multiple-game series against the same opponent .
A baseball team living in a city for three days at a time before moving on to the next one is not living in a bubble @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in “ America , ” and that ’ s the final problem with MLB reopening—and , really , all of our professional sports reopening : You just can ’ t keep America away from the players .
Our country leads the world in coronavirus cases and deaths .
Our country refuses to mandate mask wearing .
The kind of testing ( and quick results ) that is apparently available only to professional athletes here is available to everybody in countries in Europe and Asia , where sports leagues have successfully reopened .
Reopening @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lived in a country that was guided by science and culturally united in its fight against the virus .
But we don ’ t live in that kind of country .
Instead , we live in a place guided by magical thinking , led by a divisive government that has turned public health into a culture war .
We live in a country that puts its infectious disease expert on the pitcher ’ s mound to throw out the first pitch , while putting one of its greatest pitchers in the White House @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the Premier League just concluded its shortened season .
Officials say the league tested 1,574 players and staff between July 20 and July 26 and zero— “ nil ” —tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 .
In the United States , we couldn ’ t get through a weekend without over a dozen people testing positive on one team .
Trump ’ s Secret Police Have Never Been a Secret to Brown People There Are Literally No Good Options for Educating Our Kids This Fall It ’ s not too dangerous to play sports @ @ @ @ @ @ @ play sports here .
Baseball is just a mirror for the rest of our country .
Other countries can start opening their in-person consumer economies ; we can ’ t .
Other countries can start sending their children back to school without putting their teachers at unacceptable risk ; we can ’ t .
We can ’ t have nice things , like baseball and school , because we have not done the work to earn them by making those things safe to do .
Our country is no longer a victim of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to it .
We know what needs to be done to stop the spread of the virus—timely testing , contact tracing , mandatory masks , and , if necessary , sheltering in place .
We simply choose not to do these things , because “ America , F Yeah !
” People are getting sick because our government—our whole society , really—has chosen to play ball instead of being safe at home .

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Baseball is my favorite sport. I know that’s weird since I’m a Black guy under the age of 80, but it is what it is. I’m one of those guys who can pound out “baseball is an allegory for the American experience” takes like a hitter spraying singles to all fields.
Last week, on July 24, baseball reopened amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. That’s what I love about the game. Even in the midst of a national crisis, leave it to baseball to be a perfect microcosm of just how stupid and greedy this country has become.
As of this writing, 14 Miami Marlins—12 players and two coaches—have tested positive for the coronavirus. The news forced Miami to cancel its home opener against the Baltimore Orioles. The Marlins started the season on the road, in Philadelphia against the Phillies. The Phillies postponed their Monday night game against the New York Yankees after the Marlins news.
Major League Baseball decided to open the season without fans in the stands. But it did little to protect the players. Players were allowed to wear masks on the field, but not required to, and most didn’t. The dugouts were extended into the stands, but there were still lots of people packed fairly close together in the dugouts, with haphazard mask use. And a walk-off grand slam still produced an awkward, maskless pig pile at home plate in Oakland during the As’ first game of the season. Baseball is the most socially distant of the major American team sports, but players can’t stay six feet apart for the whole game.
And that’s just on the field. Off the field, MLB took few of the precautions implemented by other sports leagues. The NBA, for instance, which is planning on restarting next week, has opted to protect its players by creating a “bubble” around them. All games will take place at a massive training facility in Orlando, Fla. Players, coaches, and staff are tested before being allowed into the bubble, and they can leave only with a special dispensation. Current Issue View our current issue
But even the NBA’s bubble has holes. Over the weekend, a player for the Los Angeles Clippers, Lou Williams, was granted leave from the bubble to attend a funeral. But rapper Jack Harlow posted a picture of Williams at an Atlanta strip club, because, well, I guess everybody processes grief differently. Williams is now quarantined for 10 days, but the point is that without Harlow accidentally outing his boy, officials might have never known that Williams violated protocol to go to a flesh joint. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann
At least the NBA is trying. Baseball has no bubble. The games take place at the home stadiums of the various teams, which means teams have to travel around the country to play. The Toronto Blue Jays have no “home” games this year, because the Canadian government decided that the entire plan was unnecessarily risky and barred baseball from returning to Canada. Canada is allowing hockey to resume. Teams will be operating within two “bubbles” to play all of their games: one in Edmonton and one in Toronto. So it’s not like Canada or Toronto are objecting to live sports; they’re objecting to the specific plan MLB has put in place to play them.
Instead of following the models of the NBA or NHL, MLB seems to be trying to replicate the model of the English Premier League. Soccer teams in the EPL did travel to the home stadiums of their opponents. But the EPL took extensive measures to lock down the teams while traveling. All players and staff were tested twice a week. Perhaps most important, the EPL had teams travel on the day of the game, and travel home that night. This avoided hotel stays and extended downtime during which players could get themselves into trouble.
You can’t do that with baseball. Teams play almost every day, not a couple of days a week as in the other sports leagues. And teams play multiple-game series against the same opponent. A baseball team living in a city for three days at a time before moving on to the next one is not living in a bubble.
Instead, baseball teams are living in “America,” and that’s the final problem with MLB reopening—and, really, all of our professional sports reopening: You just can’t keep America away from the players. Our country leads the world in coronavirus cases and deaths. Our country refuses to mandate mask wearing. The kind of testing (and quick results) that is apparently available only to professional athletes here is available to everybody in countries in Europe and Asia, where sports leagues have successfully reopened.
Reopening American sports might be possible if we lived in a country that was guided by science and culturally united in its fight against the virus. But we don’t live in that kind of country. Instead, we live in a place guided by magical thinking, led by a divisive government that has turned public health into a culture war. We live in a country that puts its infectious disease expert on the pitcher’s mound to throw out the first pitch, while putting one of its greatest pitchers in the White House for a coronavirus photo-op.
In England, the Premier League just concluded its shortened season. Officials say the league tested 1,574 players and staff between July 20 and July 26 and zero—“nil”—tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. In the United States, we couldn’t get through a weekend without over a dozen people testing positive on one team. More from Mystal Trump’s Secret Police Have Never Been a Secret to Brown People Elie Mystal There Are Literally No Good Options for Educating Our Kids This Fall Elie Mystal You Can’t Mask Stupid Elie Mystal
It’s not too dangerous to play sports; it’s too dangerous to play sports here.
Baseball is just a mirror for the rest of our country. Other countries can start opening their in-person consumer economies; we can’t. Other countries can start sending their children back to school without putting their teachers at unacceptable risk; we can’t. We can’t have nice things, like baseball and school, because we have not done the work to earn them by making those things safe to do.
Our country is no longer a victim of the coronavirus pandemic but an eager accomplice to it. We know what needs to be done to stop the spread of the virus—timely testing, contact tracing, mandatory masks, and, if necessary, sheltering in place. We simply choose not to do these things, because “America, F Yeah!”
People are getting sick because our government—our whole society, really—has chosen to play ball instead of being safe at home.


thenation--2020-07-28--Property May Not Be Theft, but It’s Not NOT Theft

In a recent essay for The Nation , I argued that property destruction needs to be taken seriously as a coherent , intelligent form of political speech .
Reframing property destruction as a fully conscious , intelligent form of resistance is important for a number of reasons .
It forces us to distinguish between violence against people ( often in the name of property protection ) and violence against non-living things .
It explicitly acknowledges the role of coercion in political struggle that is obscured by a reductive notion of nonviolence as the gold standard of democratic change .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fundamental to the very terms of our political thought that it often escapes scrutiny .
Namely , private property .
The recent attacks on buildings , monuments , and police stations that occurred in the course of protests against state-sanctioned murder were not an unfortunate byproduct of otherwise peaceful , legitimate protests but integral to them .
So what does intentional and political destruction of things tell us about property ?
And what is property , anyway ?
Despite our common use of the word , property is not a thing , per @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the use and benefit of some thing .
When we say “ get off of my property , ” we generally understand the physical lawn or the front porch to be the property that we are protecting .
In fact , property is better understood as the legally enforceable right to the exclusive use of this space .
Property is my right to tell you to get off of the porch .
This is different than mere possession of something .
Theft , for example , results in possession but it does @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I stole is not my property .
Conversely , use or habitation can occasionally result in property rights to things not purchased on the market , as is the case with squatters ’ rights .
Nor is property necessarily an absolute , unitary right .
It is more accurately described as a “ bundle of rights.
” Usually , owners are not owners outright but the beneficiaries of certain “ sticks ” in this bundle .
The front porch from which I may legally banish you may , in fact , be owned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but by legal agreement , I retain some of the sticks in the bundle .
I can , therefore , call on the state in the form of the police , to enforce my limited right to dominion even if I do not own this porch outright .
The difference between the porch and right to the porch might seem like a trifling distinction .
But property rights are fundamental to the social contract , so when we conceive of property as a thing , rather than a complex bundle of rights and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ obfuscate the importance of property to social organization .
In theory , things can be placed in any relation whatsoever to one another , depending on the legal and regulatory structure that is operating in a certain context .
Property is that structure .
Furthermore , whether that claim is enforced by custom or by law , it is the product of social consensus—of a set of accepted beliefs concerning the rights available to members of a given society .
As such , it is one of the primary ways that society conceives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It is therefore telling that when we say “ property ” what we usually mean is private property : the right not only to the use and benefit of some thing but the concomitant right to exclude others from its use .
This apparently benign habit of speech has serious political consequences : When we assume that all property is private property , we exclude the possibility of other forms of property—other types of claims about the social organization of people and things and , by implication , other notions of basic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ property in general , then alternatives such as common property are assumed to be the absence of property rights .
And given that property rights are fundamental to our notion of social order , this imprecision leads us to believe that private property—the right to exclude—is what separates us from a Hobbesian state of nature where life is “ solitary , poor , nasty , brutish and short.
” Other property schemes , such as common property or universal access to state-owned private property , would certainly be far less brutish than the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ housing crisis , but when property comes to mean private property through habit and common usage , these perfectly viable alternatives seem beyond the pale .
This notion that private property is our only guarantee against chaos and tyranny is deeply ingrained .
And it ’ s wrong .
Common property , for example , is not a lack of property rights but an enforceable claim to not be excluded from the use and benefit of some thing or resource .
There ’ s another important elision that is often at work when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ impossibility ) of collective ownership : Capitalist private property and private property generated by one ’ s own labor are in fact two different things that are conflated to the advantage of capitalist private property .
Our cultural investment in the notion that private property is necessary to social order disguises the fact that capitalist private property is already collectively produced by the labor of wage workers .
This confusion of terms is cultivated by the owners of capitalist private property , who , by suggesting that they are protecting property generated by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ able to enlist the support of people whose limited wealth is in fact generated by hard work and thrift .
All this is to say that there are other possible sets of claims that could be made , enforced , and—crucially—justified than the ones we ’ ve wearily grown used to .
Claims to collective ownership , for example , could be justified by the understanding that capitalist wealth is , in fact , socially produced .
Other social relationships—ones that would more accurately reflect individual contributions to social and national wealth—are possible @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for Trump ’ s Secret Police Our common misconception of property as stuff—rather than the rights to stuff—has a traceable , historical origin .
As fully capitalist market economies replaced the limited land rights that characterized medieval European social relations with absolute ownership rights that allowed individuals to buy and sell parcels of land , the notion of property got muddy .
Feudal kings granted nobles the right to use land , but did not extend them the right to dispose of those holdings .
Property was thus more clearly a right—a right @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grain , for example , produced by peasants who , in turn , had similar if more limited rights to land use but not to disposal .
Outright ownership , and therefore the ability to imagine that the land itself was property , was not a practical or philosophical possibility .
In the experience of both noble and serfs , access to land and land use had nothing to do with ownership .
The advent of the market economy supplanted these limited rights to things with exclusive rights to them—and these absolute rights @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unlimited ability to freely exchange rights to things gave way to the notion , still very much with us , that property is not only rights to things but individual and absolute rights to things .
In other words , my absolute right to exclude you .
If private property were just stuff ( my bike , your car ) rather than rights ( a political relation between you and me enforced by the state ) , this wouldn ’ t be a problem .
But what we commonly think of as the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fact , a set of social relations with a far wider scope than the mere governance of access and distribution .
From this unlimited ability to dispose of rights to things arose not only legal guarantees of individual security in property , but the notion that private possession was the basis of self-government , political stability , economic improvement , and individual happiness and liberty .
Notions of ownership were rapidly extended into intangible realms .
Freedom and liberty became forms of property .
Free persons could not be arbitrarily “ dispossessed ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that a modern person owned .
Individuals also owned themselves and their labor .
“ Every man , ” wrote John Locke in his Second Treatise of Government , “ has a property in his own person… .
The labor of his body and the work of his hands , we may say , are properly his.
” Locke derived a natural right of property in things from this natural right of an individual ’ s property in their person : “ Whatsoever he hath mixed his labor with , and joined to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and thereby makes it his property… .
It hath by this labour something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men.
” Of course , not everyone owned their labor .
Locke quickly followed this claim with the assertion that he had a right to the things produced by his servants .
This apparent contradiction is neither a mistake nor the exclusive symptom of a less enlightened time .
It is necessary to capitalist private property , which can not exist without exploitation .
But the Lockean myth remains powerful @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the hard work of individuals and the belief that individuals have natural ownership rights in their person and their labor is still the basis of the moral and ethical justification for private property .
A large portion of the major political struggles and conflicts in American history ( including labor conflicts and the abolition of slavery ) have been organized around the extension of these “ natural ” rights to ownership of the self and the fruits of its labor .
Yet property in things , under a capitalist system , rarely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ If it did , Jeff Bezos would not be enormously wealthy while his employees earn barely livable incomes .
Evidence of the incoherence of Locke ’ s understanding of property is all around us .
But it ’ s still so deep-rooted that we find it difficult to even imagine an alternative .
Trump ’ s Secret Police Have Never Been a Secret to Brown People If we understand private property not as a legally enforceable set of claims to the use of benefit of the fruits of one ’ s own labor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the use of benefits of things acquired through expropriation and exploitation , the continuing destruction unleashed by the George Floyd protests looks a lot more rational .
Acts of looting and vandalism not only threaten private property by flouting its claims to dominion .
They threaten it by mirroring , on a small scale , the way that it is most often acquired—through forced taking—and thus disclose the Lockean sleight of hand that would lead us to believe in the legitimacy of its acquisition .
The Lockean notion that property organically emerges from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ political economists call primitive accumulation or previous accumulation .
It is the original moment of acquisition upon which wealth is built and then accumulated over time .
But this primal moment was never a matter of accumulation as such ( hence the “ so-called ” in Karl Marx ’ s “ so-called primitive accumulation ” ) .
Capitalist private property is always initially accumulated through violent acts of expropriation .
Depending on the location , various combinations of genocide , forced labor , criminalization , and the production of wage-dependent workers through land @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
To threaten property , therefore , is not to threaten mere things ; it is to threaten the prerogatives of owning classes ’ most deeply held beliefs about themselves as autonomous , self-governing individuals .
The visceral reaction to the destruction of real property in the course of protests is not an aversion to violence as much as it is a reaction to the existential implications of such an incursion .
Its mere suggestion brings with it the threat of a wholesale disruption of the very basis of our current private-property- and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ police station or a storefront is not property in and of itself , but it ’ s a synecdoche for property rights ; a violation of those physical spaces is a reminder that the right to exclude can be traversed .
It is also a reminder that private property itself is violent .
Not metaphorically violent , but violently produced and violently enforced with violent consequences .
Take for example , one of the more intractable holdovers from an era of de jure racism .
Residential segregation was legally imposed under Jim Crow @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : It limited consumer mobility according to race , manufactured scarcity , and drove up real estate prices on both sides of the color line .
This explains its persistence far better than racism as a mere idea .
The right to exclude—here articulated through race—rather than the thing itself is what produces real estate value .
And this production of value through exclusion both produces racism by preventing racial mixing in day-to-day life and , importantly , proceeds regardless of self-conscious corrections by well-meaning liberals .
If you ask the average liberal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ African American neighbors , the answer will be an emphatic “ no.
” But if you ask a person of any color whether they would support the building of public housing near their neighborhood , the answer is also likely to be “ no.
” Not necessarily because of the color of the people likely to inhabit it , but because under capitalism , protecting the value of property—value that is produced by exclusion that is often racial—is fundamental to our ability to live well .
Real estate , in the words of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ double duty ” by driving up real estate prices and producing “ proof ” of racial inferiority through the poverty and criminality that real estate value concentrates in African American neighborhoods .
The centrality of private property—the right to exclude—suggests that the notion of inclusivity and calls for white people to recognize their racial privilege , while important , are woefully insufficient .
Not only because demands to close the racial wealth gap , for example , do very little for African Americans who subsist on household incomes below the national median , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mere inclusion fails to question what inclusion actually means .
Are we satisfied with simply expanding the current set of enforceable claims to the rights and benefits of things to a more diverse population ?
Perhaps it is time to put forth a different set of claims—ones that do not rest on an individual ’ s right to exclude , that are not justified by a confused and hazy notion of “ work ethic ” that has done nothing but damage poor African Americans .
Instead , let ’ s consider an expansive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ excluded from the wealth that we collectively produce and the resources that we collectively depend on .
We may not need to smash the state—indeed , state intervention in the current property regime seems desirable—but private property deserves all the violence that it has produced .

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In a recent essay for The Nation, I argued that property destruction needs to be taken seriously as a coherent, intelligent form of political speech. Reframing property destruction as a fully conscious, intelligent form of resistance is important for a number of reasons. It forces us to distinguish between violence against people (often in the name of property protection) and violence against non-living things. It explicitly acknowledges the role of coercion in political struggle that is obscured by a reductive notion of nonviolence as the gold standard of democratic change. And it invites us to examine something so fundamental to the very terms of our political thought that it often escapes scrutiny. Namely, private property.
The recent attacks on buildings, monuments, and police stations that occurred in the course of protests against state-sanctioned murder were not an unfortunate byproduct of otherwise peaceful, legitimate protests but integral to them. So what does intentional and political destruction of things tell us about property? And what is property, anyway?
Despite our common use of the word, property is not a thing, per se, but a legally enforceable right to the use and benefit of some thing. When we say “get off of my property,” we generally understand the physical lawn or the front porch to be the property that we are protecting. In fact, property is better understood as the legally enforceable right to the exclusive use of this space. Property is my right to tell you to get off of the porch. This is different than mere possession of something. Theft, for example, results in possession but it does not confer rights. The thing that I stole is not my property.
Conversely, use or habitation can occasionally result in property rights to things not purchased on the market, as is the case with squatters’ rights. Nor is property necessarily an absolute, unitary right. It is more accurately described as a “bundle of rights.” Usually, owners are not owners outright but the beneficiaries of certain “sticks” in this bundle. The front porch from which I may legally banish you may, in fact, be owned by a bank or a landlord, but by legal agreement, I retain some of the sticks in the bundle. I can, therefore, call on the state in the form of the police, to enforce my limited right to dominion even if I do not own this porch outright. Related Article In Defense of Destroying Property R.H. Lossin
The difference between the porch and right to the porch might seem like a trifling distinction. But property rights are fundamental to the social contract, so when we conceive of property as a thing, rather than a complex bundle of rights and agreements between people and institutions, we obfuscate the importance of property to social organization. In theory, things can be placed in any relation whatsoever to one another, depending on the legal and regulatory structure that is operating in a certain context. Property is that structure. Furthermore, whether that claim is enforced by custom or by law, it is the product of social consensus—of a set of accepted beliefs concerning the rights available to members of a given society. As such, it is one of the primary ways that society conceives of and regulates relationships between its members. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann
It is therefore telling that when we say “property” what we usually mean is private property: the right not only to the use and benefit of some thing but the concomitant right to exclude others from its use. This apparently benign habit of speech has serious political consequences: When we assume that all property is private property, we exclude the possibility of other forms of property—other types of claims about the social organization of people and things and, by implication, other notions of basic human rights.
If private property is property in general, then alternatives such as common property are assumed to be the absence of property rights. And given that property rights are fundamental to our notion of social order, this imprecision leads us to believe that private property—the right to exclude—is what separates us from a Hobbesian state of nature where life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Other property schemes, such as common property or universal access to state-owned private property, would certainly be far less brutish than the property regime that lead to the 2008 housing crisis, but when property comes to mean private property through habit and common usage, these perfectly viable alternatives seem beyond the pale. Current Issue View our current issue
This notion that private property is our only guarantee against chaos and tyranny is deeply ingrained. And it’s wrong. Common property, for example, is not a lack of property rights but an enforceable claim to not be excluded from the use and benefit of some thing or resource. There’s another important elision that is often at work when we think about the possibility (or impossibility) of collective ownership: Capitalist private property and private property generated by one’s own labor are in fact two different things that are conflated to the advantage of capitalist private property. Our cultural investment in the notion that private property is necessary to social order disguises the fact that capitalist private property is already collectively produced by the labor of wage workers.
This confusion of terms is cultivated by the owners of capitalist private property, who, by suggesting that they are protecting property generated by one’s own labor, are able to enlist the support of people whose limited wealth is in fact generated by hard work and thrift. All this is to say that there are other possible sets of claims that could be made, enforced, and—crucially—justified than the ones we’ve wearily grown used to. Claims to collective ownership, for example, could be justified by the understanding that capitalist wealth is, in fact, socially produced. Other social relationships—ones that would more accurately reflect individual contributions to social and national wealth—are possible. Related Article Why Portland Became the Test Case for Trump’s Secret Police Zoë Carpenter
Our common misconception of property as stuff—rather than the rights to stuff—has a traceable, historical origin. As fully capitalist market economies replaced the limited land rights that characterized medieval European social relations with absolute ownership rights that allowed individuals to buy and sell parcels of land, the notion of property got muddy. Feudal kings granted nobles the right to use land, but did not extend them the right to dispose of those holdings. Property was thus more clearly a right—a right to collect taxes in the form of grain, for example, produced by peasants who, in turn, had similar if more limited rights to land use but not to disposal. Outright ownership, and therefore the ability to imagine that the land itself was property, was not a practical or philosophical possibility. In the experience of both noble and serfs, access to land and land use had nothing to do with ownership. The advent of the market economy supplanted these limited rights to things with exclusive rights to them—and these absolute rights were put up for sale.
This unlimited ability to freely exchange rights to things gave way to the notion, still very much with us, that property is not only rights to things but individual and absolute rights to things. In other words, my absolute right to exclude you. If private property were just stuff (my bike, your car) rather than rights (a political relation between you and me enforced by the state), this wouldn’t be a problem. But what we commonly think of as the mere exchange of goods is, in fact, a set of social relations with a far wider scope than the mere governance of access and distribution.
From this unlimited ability to dispose of rights to things arose not only legal guarantees of individual security in property, but the notion that private possession was the basis of self-government, political stability, economic improvement, and individual happiness and liberty. Notions of ownership were rapidly extended into intangible realms. Freedom and liberty became forms of property. Free persons could not be arbitrarily “dispossessed” of their liberty. Liberty was something that a modern person owned.
Individuals also owned themselves and their labor. “Every man,” wrote John Locke in his Second Treatise of Government, “has a property in his own person…. The labor of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his.” Locke derived a natural right of property in things from this natural right of an individual’s property in their person: “Whatsoever he hath mixed his labor with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property…. It hath by this labour something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men.”
Of course, not everyone owned their labor. Locke quickly followed this claim with the assertion that he had a right to the things produced by his servants. This apparent contradiction is neither a mistake nor the exclusive symptom of a less enlightened time. It is necessary to capitalist private property, which cannot exist without exploitation. But the Lockean myth remains powerful. The notion that property rights derive from the hard work of individuals and the belief that individuals have natural ownership rights in their person and their labor is still the basis of the moral and ethical justification for private property.
A large portion of the major political struggles and conflicts in American history (including labor conflicts and the abolition of slavery) have been organized around the extension of these “natural” rights to ownership of the self and the fruits of its labor. Yet property in things, under a capitalist system, rarely has any direct relationship with labor. If it did, Jeff Bezos would not be enormously wealthy while his employees earn barely livable incomes. Evidence of the incoherence of Locke’s understanding of property is all around us. But it’s still so deep-rooted that we find it difficult to even imagine an alternative. Related Article Trump’s Secret Police Have Never Been a Secret to Brown People Elie Mystal
If we understand private property not as a legally enforceable set of claims to the use of benefit of the fruits of one’s own labor but as a set of claims to the use of benefits of things acquired through expropriation and exploitation, the continuing destruction unleashed by the George Floyd protests looks a lot more rational. Acts of looting and vandalism not only threaten private property by flouting its claims to dominion. They threaten it by mirroring, on a small scale, the way that it is most often acquired—through forced taking—and thus disclose the Lockean sleight of hand that would lead us to believe in the legitimacy of its acquisition.
The Lockean notion that property organically emerges from mixing our labor with nature describes what political economists call primitive accumulation or previous accumulation. It is the original moment of acquisition upon which wealth is built and then accumulated over time. But this primal moment was never a matter of accumulation as such (hence the “so-called” in Karl Marx’s “so-called primitive accumulation”). Capitalist private property is always initially accumulated through violent acts of expropriation. Depending on the location, various combinations of genocide, forced labor, criminalization, and the production of wage-dependent workers through land seizure is how primitive accumulation actually works.
To threaten property, therefore, is not to threaten mere things; it is to threaten the prerogatives of owning classes’ most deeply held beliefs about themselves as autonomous, self-governing individuals. The visceral reaction to the destruction of real property in the course of protests is not an aversion to violence as much as it is a reaction to the existential implications of such an incursion. Its mere suggestion brings with it the threat of a wholesale disruption of the very basis of our current private-property- and market-centered system of political economy. A police station or a storefront is not property in and of itself, but it’s a synecdoche for property rights; a violation of those physical spaces is a reminder that the right to exclude can be traversed. It is also a reminder that private property itself is violent. Not metaphorically violent, but violently produced and violently enforced with violent consequences.
Take for example, one of the more intractable holdovers from an era of de jure racism. Residential segregation was legally imposed under Jim Crow, but it was also extremely profitable: It limited consumer mobility according to race, manufactured scarcity, and drove up real estate prices on both sides of the color line. This explains its persistence far better than racism as a mere idea. The right to exclude—here articulated through race—rather than the thing itself is what produces real estate value. And this production of value through exclusion both produces racism by preventing racial mixing in day-to-day life and, importantly, proceeds regardless of self-conscious corrections by well-meaning liberals.
If you ask the average liberal white person whether they would mind having African American neighbors, the answer will be an emphatic “no.” But if you ask a person of any color whether they would support the building of public housing near their neighborhood, the answer is also likely to be “no.” Not necessarily because of the color of the people likely to inhabit it, but because under capitalism, protecting the value of property—value that is produced by exclusion that is often racial—is fundamental to our ability to live well. Real estate, in the words of historian N.D.B. Connelly, “does double duty” by driving up real estate prices and producing “proof” of racial inferiority through the poverty and criminality that real estate value concentrates in African American neighborhoods.
The centrality of private property—the right to exclude—suggests that the notion of inclusivity and calls for white people to recognize their racial privilege, while important, are woefully insufficient. Not only because demands to close the racial wealth gap, for example, do very little for African Americans who subsist on household incomes below the national median, but also because organizing political demands around mere inclusion fails to question what inclusion actually means.
Are we satisfied with simply expanding the current set of enforceable claims to the rights and benefits of things to a more diverse population? Perhaps it is time to put forth a different set of claims—ones that do not rest on an individual’s right to exclude, that are not justified by a confused and hazy notion of “work ethic” that has done nothing but damage poor African Americans. Instead, let’s consider an expansive claim to the right not to be excluded from the wealth that we collectively produce and the resources that we collectively depend on. We may not need to smash the state—indeed, state intervention in the current property regime seems desirable—but private property deserves all the violence that it has produced.


thenation--2020-07-28--Our Military Is the Virus

Our Military Is the Virus

The phrase “ thinking about the unthinkable ” has always been associated with the unthinkable cataclysm of a nuclear war , and rightly so .
Lately , though , I ’ ve been pondering another kind of unthinkable scenario , nearly as nightmarish ( at least for a democracy ) as a thermonuclear Armageddon , but one that ’ s been rolling out in far slower motion : that America ’ s war on terror never ends because it ’ s far more convenient for America ’ s leaders to keep it going—until , that is , it tears apart @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I fear that it either can ’ t or won ’ t end because , as Martin Luther King Jr. pointed out in 1967 during the Vietnam War , the United States remains the world ’ s greatest purveyor of violence—and nothing in this century , the one he didn ’ t live to see , has faintly proved him wrong .
Considered another way , Washington should be classified as the planet ’ s most committed arsonist , regularly setting or fanning the flames of fires globally from Libya to Iraq , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ say it—in some quite imaginable future Iran , even as our leaders invariably boast of having the world ’ s greatest firefighters ( also known as the US military ) .
Scenarios of perpetual war haunt my thoughts .
For a healthy democracy , there should be few things more unthinkable than never-ending conflict , that steady drip-drip of death and destruction that drives militarism , reinforces authoritarianism , and facilitates disaster capitalism .
In 1795 , James Madison warned Americans that war of that sort would presage the slow death of freedom @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all too relevant in a world in which , year after year , this country continues to engage in needless wars that have nothing to do with national defense .
You Wage War Long , You Wage It Wrong To cite one example of needless war from the last century , consider America ’ s horrendous years of fighting in Vietnam and a critical lesson drawn firsthand from that conflict by reporter Jonathan Schell .
“ In Vietnam , ” he noted , “ I learned about the capacity of the human mind @ @ @ @ @ @ @ screens out even very dramatic and obvious realities.
” As a young journalist covering the war , Schell saw that the United States was losing , even as its military was destroying startlingly large areas of South Vietnam in the name of saving it from communism .
Yet America ’ s leaders , the “ best and brightest ” of the era , almost to a man refused to see that all of what passed for realism in their world , when it came to that war , was nothing short of a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is seeing and they desperately wanted to believe that they were the good guys , as well as the most powerful guys on the planet .
America was winning , it practically went without saying , because it had to be .
They were infected by their own version of an all-American victory culture , blinded by a sense of this country ’ s obvious destiny : to be the most exceptional and exceptionally triumphant nation on this planet .
As it happened , it was far more difficult for grunts on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was happening—that they were fighting and dying in a senseless war .
As a result , especially after the shock of the enemy ’ s Tet Offensive early in 1968 , escalating protests within the military ( and among veterans at home ) together with massive antiwar demonstrations finally helped put the brakes on that war .
Not before , however , more than 58,000 American troops died , along with millions of Vietnamese , Cambodians , and Laotians .
In the end , the war in Indochina was arguably too costly , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But never underestimate the military-industrial complex , especially when it comes to editing or denying reality , while being eternally over-funded for that very reality .
It ’ s a trait the complex has shared with politicians of both parties .
Don ’ t forget , for instance , the way President Ronald Reagan reedited that disastrous conflict into a “ noble cause ” in the 1980s .
And give him credit !
That was no small thing to sell to an American public that had already lived through such a war .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ about that Reaganesque moment doesn ’ t sound vaguely familiar almost four decades later when our very own “ wartime president ” long ago declared victory in the “ war ” on Covid-19 , even as the death toll from that virus approaches 150,000 in the homeland .
In the meantime , the military-industrial complex has mastered the long con of the no-win forever war in a genuinely impressive fashion .
Consider the war in Afghanistan .
In 2021 it will enter its third decade without an end in sight .
Even when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from that country , Congress approves an amendment to another massive , record-setting military budget with broad bipartisan support that effectively obstructs any efforts to do so ( while the Pentagon continues to bargain Trump down on the subject ) .
The Vietnam War , which was destroying the US military , finally ended in an ignominious withdrawal .
Almost two decades later , after the 2001 invasion , the war in Afghanistan can now be—the dream of the Vietnam era—fought in a “ limited ” fashion , at least from the point @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and most Americans ( who ignore it ) , even if not the Afghans .
The number of American troops being killed is , at this point , acceptably low , almost imperceptible in fact ( even if not to Americans who have lost loved ones over there ) .
More and more , the US military is relying on air power , unmanned drones , mercenaries , local militias , paramilitaries , and private contractors .
Minimizing American casualties is an effective way of minimizing negative media coverage here ; so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump administration to classify nearly everything related to that war while denying or downplaying ” collateral damage “ —that is , dead civilians—from it .
Their efforts boil down to a harsh truth : America just plain lies about its forever wars , so that it can keep on killing in lands far from home .
When we as Americans refuse to take in the destruction we cause , we come to passively accept the belief system of the ruling class that what ’ s still bizarrely called “ defense ” is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ collectively must spend significantly more than a trillion dollars a year on the Pentagon , the Department of Homeland Security , and a sprawling network of intelligence agencies , all justified as necessary defenders of America ’ s freedom .
Rarely does the public put much thought into the dangers inherent in a sprawling “ defense ” network that increasingly invades and dominates our lives .
Meanwhile , it ’ s clear that low-cost wars , at least in terms of US troops killed and wounded in action , can essentially be prolonged @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in anything faintly like victory or fulfill any faintly useful American goal .
The Afghan War remains the case in point .
“ Progress ” is a concept that only ever fits the enemy—the Taliban continues to gain ground—yet , in these years , figures like retired general and former CIA director David Petraeus have continued to call for a “ generational ” commitment of troops and resources there , akin to US support for South Korea .
Who says the Pentagon leadership learned nothing from Vietnam ?
They learned how to wage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ proved useful indeed when it comes to justifying and sustaining epic military budgets and the political authority that goes with them .
But here ’ s the thing : In a democracy , if you wage war long , you wage it wrong .
Athens and the historian Thucydides learned this the hard way in the struggle against Sparta more than two millennia ago .
Why do we insist on forgetting such an obvious lesson ?
“ We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us ” World War II was arguably the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
My uncle Freddie was in the Army and stationed at Pearl Harbor when it was attacked on December 7 , 1941 .
The country then came together and won a global conflict ( with lots of help ) in 44 months , emerging as the planetary superpower to boot .
Now , that superpower is very much on the wane , as Donald Trump recognized in running successfully as a declinist candidate for president in 2016 .
( Make America Great Again ! )
And yet , though he ran against this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now president , we ’ re approaching the third decade of a war on terror that has yielded little , spread radical Islamic terror outfits across an expanse of the planet , and still seemingly has no end .
“ Great nations do not fight endless wars , ” Trump himself claimed only last year .
Yet that ’ s exactly what this country has been doing , regardless of which party ruled the roost in Washington .
And here ’ s where , to give him credit , Trump actually had a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ great precisely because of the endless wars we wage and all the largely hidden but associated costs that go with them , including the recently much publicized militarization of the police here at home .
Yet , in promising to make America great again , President Trump has failed to end those wars , even as he ’ s fed the military-industrial complex with even greater piles of cash .
There ’ s a twisted logic to all this .
As the leading purveyor of violence and terror , with its leaders committed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ until the phenomenon is vanquished , the United States inevitably becomes its own opponent , conducting a perpetual war on itself .
Of course , in the process , Afghans , Iraqis , Libyans , Syrians , Somalis , and Yemenis , among other peoples on this embattled planet of ours , pay big time , but Americans pay , too .
( Have you even noticed that high-speed railroad that ’ s unbuilt , that dam in increasing disrepair , those bridges that need fixing , while money continues to pour into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the cartoon possum Pogo once so classically said , “ We have met the enemy and he is us.
” Early in the Iraq War , General Petraeus asked a question that was relevant indeed : “ Tell me how this [ war ] ends.
” The answer , obvious to so many who had protested in the global streets over the invasion to come in 2003 , was “ not well.
” Today , another answer should be obvious : never , if the Pentagon and America ’ s political and national @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it .
In thermodynamics class , I learned that a perpetual motion machine is impossible to create due to entropy .
The Pentagon never took that in and has instead been hard at work proving that a perpetual military machine is possible… until , that is , the empire it feeds off of collapses and takes us with it .
In the era of Covid-19 , as cases and deaths from the pandemic continue to soar in America , it ’ s astonishing that military spending is also soaring to record levels despite @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The reality is that , in the summer of 2020 , America faces two deadly viruses .
The first is Covid-19 .
With hard work and some luck , scientists may be able to mass-produce an effective vaccine for it , perhaps by as early as next spring .
In the meantime , scientists do have a sense of how to control it , contain it , even neutralize it , as countries from South Korea and New Zealand to Denmark have shown , even if some Americans , encouraged by our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the winds in the name of living free .
The second virus , however , could prove even more difficult to control , contain , and neutralize : forever war , a pandemic that US military forces , with their global strike missions , continue to spread across the globe .
Sadly , it ’ s a reasonable bet that in the long run , even with Donald Trump as president , America has a better chance of defeating Covid-19 than of eradicating the virus of forever war .
At least , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ serious threat ( even if not by a president blind to anything but his chances for reelection ) ; the second is , however , still largely seen as evidence of our strength and exceptionalism .
Indeed , Americans tend to imagine “ our ” military not as a dangerous virus but as a set of benevolent antibodies , defending us from global evildoers .
When it comes to America ’ s many wars , perhaps there ’ s something to be learned from the way certain people ’ s immune systems respond @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the virus sparks an exaggerated immune response that drives the body into a severe inflammatory state known as a cytokine storm .
That “ storm ” can lead to multiple organ failure followed by death , yet it occurs in the cause of defending the body from a viral attack .
In a similar fashion , America ’ s exaggerated response to 19 hijackers on 9/11 and then to perceived threats around the globe , especially the nebulous threat of terror , has led to an analogous ( if little noticed ) cytokine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( and militarized police ) antibodies have been sapping our resources , inflaming our body politic , and slowly strangling the vital organs of democracy .
Left unchecked , this “ storm ” of inflammatory militarism will be the death of democracy in America .
To put this country right , what ’ s needed is not only an effective vaccine for Covid-19 but a way to control the “ antibodies ” produced by America ’ s forever wars abroad and , as the years have gone by , at home—and the ways @ @ @ @ @ @ @ collective US political , social , and economic body .
Only when we find ways to vaccinate ourselves against the destructive violence of those wars , whether on foreign streets or our own , can we begin to heal as a democratic society .
To survive , the human body needs a healthy immune system , so when it goes haywire , becomes wildly inflamed , and ends up attacking and degrading our vital organs , we ’ re in trouble deep .
It ’ s a reasonable guess that , in analogous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a ventilator and beginning to feel the effects of multiple organ failure .
Unlike a human patient , doctors can ’ t put our democracy into a medically induced coma .
But collectively we should be working to suppress our overactive immune system before it kills us .
In other words , it ’ s truly time to defund that military machine of ours , as well as the militarized version of the police , and rethink how actual threats can be neutralized without turning every response into an endless war .
So @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time to think the unthinkable .
For the US government that means—gasp !
—peace .
Such a peace would start with imperial retrenchment ( bring our troops home ! )
, much reduced military ( and police ) budgets , and complete withdrawal from Afghanistan and any other place associated with that “ generational ” war on terror .
The alternative is a cytokine storm that will , in the end , tear us apart from within .

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.
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The phrase “thinking about the unthinkable” has always been associated with the unthinkable cataclysm of a nuclear war, and rightly so. Lately, though, I’ve been pondering another kind of unthinkable scenario, nearly as nightmarish (at least for a democracy) as a thermonuclear Armageddon, but one that’s been rolling out in far slower motion: that America’s war on terror never ends because it’s far more convenient for America’s leaders to keep it going—until, that is, it tears apart anything we ever imagined as democracy.
I fear that it either can’t or won’t end because, as Martin Luther King Jr. pointed out in 1967 during the Vietnam War, the United States remains the world’s greatest purveyor of violence—and nothing in this century, the one he didn’t live to see, has faintly proved him wrong. Considered another way, Washington should be classified as the planet’s most committed arsonist, regularly setting or fanning the flames of fires globally from Libya to Iraq, Somalia to Afghanistan, Syria to—dare I say it—in some quite imaginable future Iran, even as our leaders invariably boast of having the world’s greatest firefighters (also known as the US military).
Scenarios of perpetual war haunt my thoughts. For a healthy democracy, there should be few things more unthinkable than never-ending conflict, that steady drip-drip of death and destruction that drives militarism, reinforces authoritarianism, and facilitates disaster capitalism. In 1795, James Madison warned Americans that war of that sort would presage the slow death of freedom and representative government. His prediction seems all too relevant in a world in which, year after year, this country continues to engage in needless wars that have nothing to do with national defense.
You Wage War Long, You Wage It Wrong
To cite one example of needless war from the last century, consider America’s horrendous years of fighting in Vietnam and a critical lesson drawn firsthand from that conflict by reporter Jonathan Schell. “In Vietnam,” he noted, “I learned about the capacity of the human mind to build a model of experience that screens out even very dramatic and obvious realities.” As a young journalist covering the war, Schell saw that the United States was losing, even as its military was destroying startlingly large areas of South Vietnam in the name of saving it from communism. Yet America’s leaders, the “best and brightest” of the era, almost to a man refused to see that all of what passed for realism in their world, when it came to that war, was nothing short of a first-class lie. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann
Why? Because believing is seeing and they desperately wanted to believe that they were the good guys, as well as the most powerful guys on the planet. America was winning, it practically went without saying, because it had to be. They were infected by their own version of an all-American victory culture, blinded by a sense of this country’s obvious destiny: to be the most exceptional and exceptionally triumphant nation on this planet.
As it happened, it was far more difficult for grunts on the ground to deny the reality of what was happening—that they were fighting and dying in a senseless war. As a result, especially after the shock of the enemy’s Tet Offensive early in 1968, escalating protests within the military (and among veterans at home) together with massive antiwar demonstrations finally helped put the brakes on that war. Not before, however, more than 58,000 American troops died, along with millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians.
In the end, the war in Indochina was arguably too costly, messy, and futile to continue. But never underestimate the military-industrial complex, especially when it comes to editing or denying reality, while being eternally over-funded for that very reality. It’s a trait the complex has shared with politicians of both parties. Don’t forget, for instance, the way President Ronald Reagan reedited that disastrous conflict into a “noble cause” in the 1980s. And give him credit! That was no small thing to sell to an American public that had already lived through such a war. By the way, tell me something about that Reaganesque moment doesn’t sound vaguely familiar almost four decades later when our very own “wartime president” long ago declared victory in the “war” on Covid-19, even as the death toll from that virus approaches 150,000 in the homeland. Current Issue View our current issue
In the meantime, the military-industrial complex has mastered the long con of the no-win forever war in a genuinely impressive fashion. Consider the war in Afghanistan. In 2021 it will enter its third decade without an end in sight. Even when President Trump makes noises about withdrawing troops from that country, Congress approves an amendment to another massive, record-setting military budget with broad bipartisan support that effectively obstructs any efforts to do so (while the Pentagon continues to bargain Trump down on the subject).
The Vietnam War, which was destroying the US military, finally ended in an ignominious withdrawal. Almost two decades later, after the 2001 invasion, the war in Afghanistan can now be—the dream of the Vietnam era—fought in a “limited” fashion, at least from the point of view of Congress, the Pentagon, and most Americans (who ignore it), even if not the Afghans. The number of American troops being killed is, at this point, acceptably low, almost imperceptible in fact (even if not to Americans who have lost loved ones over there).
More and more, the US military is relying on air power, unmanned drones, mercenaries, local militias, paramilitaries, and private contractors. Minimizing American casualties is an effective way of minimizing negative media coverage here; so, too, are efforts by the Trump administration to classify nearly everything related to that war while denying or downplaying”collateral damage“—that is, dead civilians—from it.
Their efforts boil down to a harsh truth: America just plain lies about its forever wars, so that it can keep on killing in lands far from home.
When we as Americans refuse to take in the destruction we cause, we come to passively accept the belief system of the ruling class that what’s still bizarrely called “defense” is a “must have” and that we collectively must spend significantly more than a trillion dollars a year on the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, and a sprawling network of intelligence agencies, all justified as necessary defenders of America’s freedom. Rarely does the public put much thought into the dangers inherent in a sprawling “defense” network that increasingly invades and dominates our lives.
Meanwhile, it’s clear that low-cost wars, at least in terms of US troops killed and wounded in action, can essentially be prolonged indefinitely, even when they never result in anything faintly like victory or fulfill any faintly useful American goal. The Afghan War remains the case in point. “Progress” is a concept that only ever fits the enemy—the Taliban continues to gain ground—yet, in these years, figures like retired general and former CIA director David Petraeus have continued to call for a “generational” commitment of troops and resources there, akin to US support for South Korea.
Who says the Pentagon leadership learned nothing from Vietnam? They learned how to wage open-ended wars basically forever, which has proved useful indeed when it comes to justifying and sustaining epic military budgets and the political authority that goes with them. But here’s the thing: In a democracy, if you wage war long, you wage it wrong. Athens and the historian Thucydides learned this the hard way in the struggle against Sparta more than two millennia ago. Why do we insist on forgetting such an obvious lesson?
“We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us”
World War II was arguably the last war Americans truly had to fight. My uncle Freddie was in the Army and stationed at Pearl Harbor when it was attacked on December 7, 1941. The country then came together and won a global conflict (with lots of help) in 44 months, emerging as the planetary superpower to boot. Now, that superpower is very much on the wane, as Donald Trump recognized in running successfully as a declinist candidate for president in 2016. (Make America Great Again!) And yet, though he ran against this country’s forever wars and is now president, we’re approaching the third decade of a war on terror that has yielded little, spread radical Islamic terror outfits across an expanse of the planet, and still seemingly has no end.
“Great nations do not fight endless wars,” Trump himself claimed only last year. Yet that’s exactly what this country has been doing, regardless of which party ruled the roost in Washington. And here’s where, to give him credit, Trump actually had a certain insight. America is no longer great precisely because of the endless wars we wage and all the largely hidden but associated costs that go with them, including the recently much publicized militarization of the police here at home. Yet, in promising to make America great again, President Trump has failed to end those wars, even as he’s fed the military-industrial complex with even greater piles of cash.
There’s a twisted logic to all this. As the leading purveyor of violence and terror, with its leaders committed to fighting Islamic terrorism across the planet until the phenomenon is vanquished, the United States inevitably becomes its own opponent, conducting a perpetual war on itself. Of course, in the process, Afghans, Iraqis, Libyans, Syrians, Somalis, and Yemenis, among other peoples on this embattled planet of ours, pay big time, but Americans pay, too. (Have you even noticed that high-speed railroad that’s unbuilt, that dam in increasing disrepair, those bridges that need fixing, while money continues to pour into the national security state?) As the cartoon possum Pogo once so classically said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Early in the Iraq War, General Petraeus asked a question that was relevant indeed: “Tell me how this [war] ends.” The answer, obvious to so many who had protested in the global streets over the invasion to come in 2003, was “not well.” Today, another answer should be obvious: never, if the Pentagon and America’s political and national security elite have anything to do with it. In thermodynamics class, I learned that a perpetual motion machine is impossible to create due to entropy. The Pentagon never took that in and has instead been hard at work proving that a perpetual military machine is possible… until, that is, the empire it feeds off of collapses and takes us with it.
America’s Military Complex as a Cytokine Storm
In the era of Covid-19, as cases and deaths from the pandemic continue to soar in America, it’s astonishing that military spending is also soaring to record levels despite a medical emergency and a major recession.
The reality is that, in the summer of 2020, America faces two deadly viruses. The first is Covid-19. With hard work and some luck, scientists may be able to mass-produce an effective vaccine for it, perhaps by as early as next spring. In the meantime, scientists do have a sense of how to control it, contain it, even neutralize it, as countries from South Korea and New Zealand to Denmark have shown, even if some Americans, encouraged by our president, insist on throwing all caution to the winds in the name of living free. The second virus, however, could prove even more difficult to control, contain, and neutralize: forever war, a pandemic that US military forces, with their global strike missions, continue to spread across the globe.
Sadly, it’s a reasonable bet that in the long run, even with Donald Trump as president, America has a better chance of defeating Covid-19 than of eradicating the virus of forever war. At least, the first is generally seen as a serious threat (even if not by a president blind to anything but his chances for reelection); the second is, however, still largely seen as evidence of our strength and exceptionalism. Indeed, Americans tend to imagine “our” military not as a dangerous virus but as a set of benevolent antibodies, defending us from global evildoers.
When it comes to America’s many wars, perhaps there’s something to be learned from the way certain people’s immune systems respond to Covid-19. In some cases, the virus sparks an exaggerated immune response that drives the body into a severe inflammatory state known as a cytokine storm. That “storm” can lead to multiple organ failure followed by death, yet it occurs in the cause of defending the body from a viral attack.
In a similar fashion, America’s exaggerated response to 19 hijackers on 9/11 and then to perceived threats around the globe, especially the nebulous threat of terror, has led to an analogous (if little noticed) cytokine storm in the American system. Military (and militarized police) antibodies have been sapping our resources, inflaming our body politic, and slowly strangling the vital organs of democracy. Left unchecked, this “storm” of inflammatory militarism will be the death of democracy in America.
To put this country right, what’s needed is not only an effective vaccine for Covid-19 but a way to control the “antibodies” produced by America’s forever wars abroad and, as the years have gone by, at home—and the ways they’ve attacked and inflamed the collective US political, social, and economic body. Only when we find ways to vaccinate ourselves against the destructive violence of those wars, whether on foreign streets or our own, can we begin to heal as a democratic society.
To survive, the human body needs a healthy immune system, so when it goes haywire, becomes wildly inflamed, and ends up attacking and degrading our vital organs, we’re in trouble deep. It’s a reasonable guess that, in analogous terms, American democracy is already on a ventilator and beginning to feel the effects of multiple organ failure.
Unlike a human patient, doctors can’t put our democracy into a medically induced coma. But collectively we should be working to suppress our overactive immune system before it kills us. In other words, it’s truly time to defund that military machine of ours, as well as the militarized version of the police, and rethink how actual threats can be neutralized without turning every response into an endless war.
So many years later, it’s time to think the unthinkable. For the US government that means—gasp!—peace. Such a peace would start with imperial retrenchment (bring our troops home!), much reduced military (and police) budgets, and complete withdrawal from Afghanistan and any other place associated with that “generational” war on terror. The alternative is a cytokine storm that will, in the end, tear us apart from within.


thenation--2020-07-28--Why Biden May Follow Through on a Bolder Agenda

With Joe Biden ’ s polling lead growing , more attention is being paid to what he might do as president .
The signals have been contradictory to say the least .
After positioning himself as a resolute moderate to win delegates for the nomination , he announced that this was “ a real inflection in American history ” not unlike “ what Roosevelt [ faced ] .
” When the six task forces he set up with Senator Bernie Sanders ( I-Vt. ) hammered out a party platform , Sanders announced that “ the compromise that they came up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden the most progressive president since FDR.
” But as The New York Times ’ Michelle Cottle pointed out , Biden ’ s closest advisers are veteran Democratic Party operatives from the Clinton and Obama eras , not known for original , much less radical , thinking .
So the question remains—what will Biden do ?
The Sanders-Biden working groups ’ recommendations , which will largely define the official 2020 Democratic Party Platform , are certainly bolder than anything Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama ran on .
Even as Biden has consistently rejected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Green New Deal , etc.—he ’ s now backing a relatively far-reaching series of reforms .
Biden ’ s four-part economic program , dubbed “ Build Back Better , ” embraces strategies that have been largely anathema to Democrats in the conservative era—public-investment-driven growth , industrial policy , fair trade , and an expansion of economic rights .
Though still not backing the Green New Deal , he ’ s put forth a $ 1.7 trillion investment program on clean energy and energy efficiency , a $ 1.3 trillion Buy America program @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and hundreds of billions of investment in education and housing each .
In an economic downturn , the platform calls for subsidies to keep workers employed rather than force them into unemployment .
Beyond the downturn , workers are promised a $ 15 minimum wage—a core Sanders demand—universal paid sick leave , stronger protections for organizing , and increased minimum payments in Social Security as well as extending partial coverage to unpaid care workers .
Read the full text of Katrina ’ s column here .

EDITOR’S NOTE: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.
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With Joe Biden’s polling lead growing, more attention is being paid to what he might do as president. The signals have been contradictory to say the least. After positioning himself as a resolute moderate to win delegates for the nomination, he announced that this was “a real inflection in American history” not unlike “what Roosevelt [faced].” When the six task forces he set up with Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) hammered out a party platform, Sanders announced that “the compromise that they came up with, if implemented, will make Biden the most progressive president since FDR.” But as The New York Times’ Michelle Cottle pointed out, Biden’s closest advisers are veteran Democratic Party operatives from the Clinton and Obama eras, not known for original, much less radical, thinking. So the question remains—what will Biden do?
The Sanders-Biden working groups’ recommendations, which will largely define the official 2020 Democratic Party Platform, are certainly bolder than anything Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama ran on. Even as Biden has consistently rejected some of signature issues—Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, etc.—he’s now backing a relatively far-reaching series of reforms.
Biden’s four-part economic program, dubbed “Build Back Better,” embraces strategies that have been largely anathema to Democrats in the conservative era—public-investment-driven growth, industrial policy, fair trade, and an expansion of economic rights. Though still not backing the Green New Deal, he’s put forth a $1.7 trillion investment program on clean energy and energy efficiency, a $1.3 trillion Buy America program to rebuild and modernize US infrastructure, and hundreds of billions of investment in education and housing each. In an economic downturn, the platform calls for subsidies to keep workers employed rather than force them into unemployment. Beyond the downturn, workers are promised a $15 minimum wage—a core Sanders demand—universal paid sick leave, stronger protections for organizing, and increased minimum payments in Social Security as well as extending partial coverage to unpaid care workers.
Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.


Wartime President

“ The Trump Administration is trying to block billions of dollars for states to conduct testing and contact tracing.
” @ @ @ @ @ s disposed To mock all masks and states that keep bars closed .
A list @ @ @ @ @ should compile , In case some day we hold a war crimes trial .

This article appears in the August 10/17, 2020 issue.
“Trump calls himself ‘wartime president’ over coronavirus pandemic.”
—CBS
“The Trump Administration is trying to block billions of dollars for states
to conduct testing and contact tracing.” —The Washington Post
This self-styled wartime president’s disposed
To mock all masks and states that keep bars closed.
A list of acts like these we should compile,
In case some day we hold a war crimes trial.


thenation--2020-07-28--Letters From the August 10/17, 2020, Issue

Re “ How to Make ‘ Defund the Police ’ a Reality ” [ Bryce Covert , July 13/20 ] : We of course need to change American policing in light of its bloody , racist history , but we can not stop there and must get to its centuries-old roots in empire .
Let ’ s make it “ demilitarize the police.
” That opens the focus to include America ’ s deeper need : Defund the military and the CIA , our international “ police ” spending in the trillions , which benefits only the global war and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cut the budgets for the Defense Department , the National Security Agency , the CIA , and other military-rooted unaccountable agencies that provide corporate welfare to the weapons cartels .
Opening that vault would mean we could expand and improve social services such as mental health and free or low-cost pre-K and college education and provide universal basic health care .
There would be funds to improve our roads , bridges , renewable energy investments , and public services to benefit all Americans .
Imagine being able to replace America ’ s empty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that demonstrates visible commitment to those values .
Destin Jenkins makes a vital proposal in “ Just Investment ” [ July 13/20 ] that we need “ to leverage completely new financial mechanisms ” for investment in our cities ’ infrastructure .
But he overlooks the most effective tool at hand .
Many cities—like San Francisco , Los Angeles , and Seattle—have taken steps toward establishing public banks , which are designed to lend for infrastructure at favorable rates .
Cities and states need to borrow this model , which is successfully and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Asia .
Jenkins makes the case well that the traditional use of bonds to borrow from Wall Street will only sink cities ever deeper into a debt trap .
A bank founded by a city with its own long-range vision can help finance schools , road and rail , and affordable housing while building its capital base and keeping its money at home .
It is a stable formula .
Look to the example of the public Bank of North Dakota , which has built its capital over 100 years by prudently lending @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Amazingly , it is the only public bank in use in the United States .
Re “ Circus Maximus ” by Patricia J. Williams , July 13/20 : The analogy of Donald Trump as a pro-wrestling entertainer goes even further .
World Wrestling Entertainment scripts rivalries between the performers , and fans follow them avidly , despite on some level knowing that they are fiction .
So , too , does Trump play out his staged conflicts with TV personalities , journalists , and Democratic politicians .
oseph oyd Re “ Goodbye , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ July 13/20 ] : Let us not be confused about or sympathetic to the defense of Confederate memorials as the preservation of Southern heritage .
That heritage is one that brought carnage and suffering to this nation and remains an affront to Americans whose ancestors were enslaved .
Their argument is an equivocation of true intent , and within it lies a racism that Americans must confront and reject .
Ours is not to judge the souls of Robert E. Lee , J.E.B .
Stuart , and Jefferson Davis ; that lies with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ profound responsibility to deny them tribute they do not deserve .
evin ilson rolling hills estates , calif. Katha Pollitt in “ Goodbye , Columbus ?
” rightfully highlights our perverse legacy of celebrating prominent offenders of democratic values .
However , she doesn ’ t mention what arguably would be the most forcefully defended symbol of all : the District of Columbia .
But she deserves kudos for noting that “ George Floyd didn ’ t die because Minneapolis lacked the right monuments ” —emphasizing the intense , long-term centrality of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s skepticism in “ The Outrage Must Not End ” [ June 29/July 6 ] is well placed .
We will see this police brutality again and again .
In 1967 and ‘ 68 , when I was a young social worker in Detroit , the city exploded with police brutality , aided by the Michigan National Guard and Army troops .
The official count , I believe , was 34 people shot dead .
My liberal friends said , “ This shall not happen again.
” Reforming the police is not a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spinning their wheels .
Radical change is needed in our institutions .
Let us be honest about this : The function of police is to effect the will of the government , not to protect the public from harm .
That ubiquitous slogan “ To protect and to serve ” could not be more cynically misleading .
“ A Driving Force ” by Ed Morales in the July 13/20 issue misstated Reies López Tijerina ’ s name .
It also incorrectly stated that Tijerina was a Nevada land rights activist and the leader @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on land rights in New Mexico and participated in La Raza Unida events but was not an official leader of the party .
“ Coming Forward ” by Stephen Kearse [ July 27/August 3 ] stated that On the Record went through multiple cuts as a result of Oprah Winfrey ’ s concerns regarding the filmmakers ’ knowledge of hip-hop and Black history .
Winfrey was uncertain whether the film “ captured the nuances of hip-hop culture and the struggles of black women , ” according to The New York Times , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ went through multiple cuts as a result .

This article appears in the August 10/17, 2020 issue.
Demilitarize the Police
Re “How to Make ‘Defund the Police’ a Reality” [Bryce Covert, July 13/20]: We of course need to change American policing in light of its bloody, racist history, but we cannot stop there and must get to its centuries-old roots in empire. Let’s make it “demilitarize the police.” That opens the focus to include America’s deeper need: Defund the military and the CIA, our international “police” spending in the trillions, which benefits only the global war and weapons industry.
Audit the Pentagon. Cut the budgets for the Defense Department, the National Security Agency, the CIA, and other military-rooted unaccountable agencies that provide corporate welfare to the weapons cartels.
Opening that vault would mean we could expand and improve social services such as mental health and free or low-cost pre-K and college education and provide universal basic health care. There would be funds to improve our roads, bridges, renewable energy investments, and public services to benefit all Americans.
Imagine being able to replace America’s empty rhetoric of human rights with measurable change that demonstrates visible commitment to those values.
B ob S hea
rochester, n.y. Current Issue View our current issue
The Case for Public Banks
Destin Jenkins makes a vital proposal in “Just Investment” [July 13/20] that we need “to leverage completely new financial mechanisms” for investment in our cities’ infrastructure. But he overlooks the most effective tool at hand. Many cities—like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle—have taken steps toward establishing public banks, which are designed to lend for infrastructure at favorable rates. Cities and states need to borrow this model, which is successfully and widely used for infrastructure in Europe and Asia.
Jenkins makes the case well that the traditional use of bonds to borrow from Wall Street will only sink cities ever deeper into a debt trap. A bank founded by a city with its own long-range vision can help finance schools, road and rail, and affordable housing while building its capital base and keeping its money at home. It is a stable formula. Look to the example of the public Bank of North Dakota, which has built its capital over 100 years by prudently lending for its state’s development. Amazingly, it is the only public bank in use in the United States. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann
D ennis J. O rtblad
Board Member, Public Banking Institute
seattle
Wrestlemania
Re “Circus Maximus” by Patricia J. Williams, July 13/20: The analogy of Donald Trump as a pro-wrestling entertainer goes even further. World Wrestling Entertainment scripts rivalries between the performers, and fans follow them avidly, despite on some level knowing that they are fiction. So, too, does Trump play out his staged conflicts with TV personalities, journalists, and Democratic politicians.
J oseph B oyd
A Perverse Legacy
Re “Goodbye, Columbus?” by Katha Pollitt [July 13/20]: Let us not be confused about or sympathetic to the defense of Confederate memorials as the preservation of Southern heritage. That heritage is one that brought carnage and suffering to this nation and remains an affront to Americans whose ancestors were enslaved. Their argument is an equivocation of true intent, and within it lies a racism that Americans must confront and reject. Ours is not to judge the souls of Robert E. Lee, J.E.B. Stuart, and Jefferson Davis; that lies with their creator. But we have a profound responsibility to deny them tribute they do not deserve.
K evin T. W ilson
rolling hills estates, calif.
Katha Pollitt in “Goodbye, Columbus?” rightfully highlights our perverse legacy of celebrating prominent offenders of democratic values. However, she doesn’t mention what arguably would be the most forcefully defended symbol of all: the District of Columbia.
But she deserves kudos for noting that “George Floyd didn’t die because Minneapolis lacked the right monuments”—emphasizing the intense, long-term centrality of the justice work ahead.
J oan D owling
Spinning Their Wheels
Elie Mystal’s skepticism in “The Outrage Must Not End” [June 29/July 6] is well placed. We will see this police brutality again and again. In 1967 and ‘68, when I was a young social worker in Detroit, the city exploded with police brutality, aided by the Michigan National Guard and Army troops. The official count, I believe, was 34 people shot dead. My liberal friends said, “This shall not happen again.”
Reforming the police is not a solution to the problem. Reformers are spinning their wheels. Radical change is needed in our institutions. Let us be honest about this: The function of police is to effect the will of the government, not to protect the public from harm. That ubiquitous slogan “To protect and to serve” could not be more cynically misleading.
G.F. D obbertin
portland, ore.
Corrections
“A Driving Force” by Ed Morales in the July 13/20 issue misstated Reies López Tijerina’s name. It also incorrectly stated that Tijerina was a Nevada land rights activist and the leader of La Raza Unida. Tijerina focused on land rights in New Mexico and participated in La Raza Unida events but was not an official leader of the party.
“Coming Forward” by Stephen Kearse [July 27/August 3] stated that On the Record went through multiple cuts as a result of Oprah Winfrey’s concerns regarding the filmmakers’ knowledge of hip-hop and Black history. Winfrey was uncertain whether the film “captured the nuances of hip-hop culture and the struggles of black women,” according to The New York Times, but it is not clear whether the film went through multiple cuts as a result.