The Professor

As we move past the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, it helps to be aware of the changes in U.S. political culture that have transformed this nation over the last two decades. I teach a history class at Lehigh University, “The War on Terrorism in Politics, Media, and Memory,” which is billed as examining the “meaning” of this war, via an exploration of “personal experiences and critical perspectives on the war,” as depicted in official rhetoric, the news media, and popular film.--AD

It's nice to see DiMaggio back on the pages of CP.  If I had money I'd enroll in his history/poli sci classes.  Seems like he's a hella prof.

Yep, that's what we need, more good teachers. Oh, and open tuition.


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On Manson and Didion

What is clear for Didion is that the gruesome violence of the Tate-LaBianca tragedy denoted the end point of the decade, the wages of a strange, unhinged time. Her recounting of the era centers upon the Manson slayings as the grim culmination of all that messy campus activism, dissolute rock musicians, black nationalism and strange new communes popping up like dandelions. In Didion’s telling, “no one was surprised” that five people had been slaughtered in Roman Polanski’s Benedict Canyon mansion—a curious note to strike about a crime that continues to shock to this day.--DO

A good read.


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Clarity

Capitalists seek to maximize profits and reduce the cost of labor. This sums up capitalism at its core. It is defined by these immutable objectives. It is not about democracy. It is not, as has been claimed, about wealth creation for the working class. It has nothing to do with freedom. Those capitalists, especially in corporations, who are not able to increase profits and decrease the cost of labor, through layoffs, cutting wages, destroying unions, offshoring, outsourcing or automating jobs, are replaced. Personal ethics are irrelevant. Capitalists are about acquisition and exploitation.--CH

Chris Hedges is back, refreshed, clear-headed after a long vacation, and ready to rumble on the pages of Truthdig.


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Either/Or

Criticizing the media has become a sensitive issue for many on the left in the age of Trump. With an authoritarian president in office who seeks to discredit the media at every turn and regularly calls the press the “enemy of the people,” being too critical of the journalism business in 2019 can feel a bit like kicking someone when they’re down. Journalists in and beyond the U.S. not only must deal with a hostile president who attacks reporters and publications that don’t offer a steady stream of fawning coverage, but they are also grappling with the fact that their industry is in rapid decline.--CL

This essay makes excellent points about two differing critiques of the U.S. media by the left and right in today's political discourse.

The right regularly labels mainstream news outlets as "liberal," or "socialist," which is absolute  bullshit.

Nudging closer to the truth, the left's critique of big media marks them as capitalist stooges and collaborators.

An interesting read. 


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Fifty Years Ago, They Said No

Fifty years ago this fall, a campus upsurge turned opposition to the Vietnam War into a genuine mass movement.

On October 15, 1969, several million students, along with community-based activists, participated in anti-war events under the banner of the “Vietnam Moratorium.”

A month later, 500,000 people came to a Washington, D.C. demonstration of then-unprecedented size, organized by the “New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam.”--SE


A new book documenting the Vietnam era GI antiwar movement.


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Of Interest

Ontology is important. We need to define what is right-wing and what is populist. Some of the appeal of Trump, of Nigel Farage, the leader of the Brexit Party in Britain, is the very non-right-wingness. The apparent standing up for the little man, standing up for the worker against big business, against the bankers and the establishment—Trump played that card very well in the Rust Belt of the United States. Nigel Farage played it very cannily in similar places in the Brexit referendum in Britain. The support they garnered was not in fact right-wing, but left-wing. It was an anti-capitalist critique of the kind of finance capitalist model that has beggared millions of people and whole areas of your country and mine. When they say populist, I wonder if they really mean popular. I am attacked as a left-wing populist. But what does that actually mean?--George Galloway to Chris Hedges

A leading British socialist speaks with Chris Hedges for Truthdig.


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The Original Rules of College Foot Ball

On Nov. 6, 1869, the first-ever college football game was played between the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) and Rutgers College. The game bore little resemblance to college football as we know it today, with a far different set of rules designed to minimize scoring and maximize the bone-crushing -- and often deadly -- violence that characterized the sport's early years. A century and a half later, we've uncovered the original rulebook that was used for that first game, which provides a fascinating glimpse into the sport's rudimentary beginnings and reveals just how dramatically it has changed over the past 150 years.--SE

With another season of my favorite American game straight ahead and barreling at us like a berserk fullback (a seldom used position player of long ago) bent on annihilation, it is past time to review the original game's rules and purpose.

As Law Two Sec. D reads: "The main point of Foot Ball is maiming."

There you have it, the once written--and now secret--rule of the modern game, which many fans today refer to as "war."


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Leary

This turned up in my inbox this morning, with a request to get it into the hands of an important third party. I've never paid much attention to Denis Leary, but perhaps I should have. This is pretty damn good.


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Sweet Writing

+ Many of the liberals talking the loudest about “white supremacy” on MSDNC have only known its privileges, thus they would have us believe white supremacy resides only in the vile minds of the KKK and Aryan Nations, instead of the racist forces operating inside the banks, the school boards, the police, the FBI, the Pentagon that degrade, impoverish and kill people every single day.--JSC

St. Clair nailing it, per usual.

DiMaggio, Levine and Street, et al., put it out there.  The old gang never gets old.


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Send Her Back

(click on image to enlarge)

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Her Belligerence: Night of the Long Knives

Pelosi later met with Ocasio-Cortez, but that did little to repair the damage. Lost in the media hubbub was the reality that Pelosi didn’t only express thinly veiled contempt toward four deeply progressive congresswomen; she was also conveying a similar attitude toward millions of Americans who share their political outlooks, while many have been drawn into political engagement due to their achievements. As our letter put it, “Dismissive comments about new progressive members of Congress have given the impression of a disdainful attitude toward like-minded progressives and Democratic activists across the country.”--NS

Yep, it sure sounds like Pelosi bought herself all the power a lil' ol' California multi-millionaire thinks she's entitled to and resents uppity leftist women from progressive districts challenging her empire.

Pelosi gives me the same indigestion that Hillary Clinton always has.  I can't look at her without belching.  Listening to her causes all the oxygen around me to be sucked away by evil monsters that crawl from her fleshy old face.  Drowning has a more favorable feeling. I feel like I'm being waterboarded. I'm covered in gasoline and someone nearby holds a match. I'm in a nightmare and the worst enemies of my past have surrounded me. They're armed with kitchen knives.  They're closing in step by step.  I won't survive this one.


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American Slaughter

Democrats, on the whole, are smarter than Republicans, but they are more base and servile, more pusillanimous, and a whole lot more hypocritical. Republicans are worse, of course. One could gaze upon them and despair for the human race, even before Trump made them worse still. But Democrats! What’s not to hate?--AL

Andrew Levine sprays his Uzi-like intellect around the room.

The assault continues from every direction.


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Weekend News

Anyone with normal sensibilities who does not tune the world out completely cannot help but find the Trump presidency disorienting and upsetting – not only because the fate of the planet is in the hands of an illiberal, willfully ignorant, inept, sleaze ball with a Mussolini smirk, whose modus operandi is to stir up racial animosities, and who delights in gratuitous displays of cruelty towards black and brown people, but also in the way that people feel in the course of a nightmare from which they cannot awaken.--AL

A Mussolini smirk, and more.

The good stuff doesn't stop.


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It Must Be Thursday

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Perfect

The next 10 days of summer!


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