Tag: Politics

Trump Diplomacy–Comic Book Edition

Our mindless Donny with his off again on again war with Iran made me think back to his first term and into his second and wonder just what the Hell is he thinking….that is if he thinking at all….

I recently read a great article that tries to explain these brain farts Donny keeps having….

Writers often try to gild their tawdry times or dignify their flawed leaders with lofty literary analogies — notably, America as the New Jerusalem; Lincoln as Moses leading his people through the wilderness of the Civil War; the Kennedy White House as an incarnation of King Arthur’s “Camelot“; or Lyndon Johnson living his last years as a latter-day King Lear, cast off by his ungrateful children into the moors of south Texas.

But what are we going to do with Donald Trump? Wouldn’t his vanity, his vulgarity, and his relentless pursuit of money and minerals in every corner of the globe turn any literary analogies into soggy clichés? Like the showman P.T. Barnum, Trump is an American original, whose true metaphors can be found only in comic books (America’s one true art form), not literature. As Ariel Dorfman reminded us once upon a time in How to Read Donald Duck, that classic guide to U.S. cultural imperialism in Latin America, there was always more to a Disney comic book than gags.

To understand Trump’s America, we need our own comic guidebook to his global misadventures, which might be titled something like “How to Read Scrooge McDuck.” After all, in case you never had the pleasure of his acquaintance, Scrooge McDuck was the predatory billionaire in Disney comics, who was amazingly popular among teenagers in Cold War America. In that era when American corporations scampered around the global economy extracting profits wherever they saw fit, Scrooge McDuck put a friendly face on U.S. imperialism, making covert intervention and commercial exploitation look benign, even comic.

From 1952 to 1988, a period coinciding almost precisely with the Cold War, the comic’s creator, illustrator Carl Barks, filled the country’s magazine racks with more than 220 comic books celebrating Scrooge’s schemes to accumulate ever more billions by dispatching Donald Duck and his triplet nephews (Huey, Dewey, and Louie) to scour the world for riches — gems, minerals, oil, and lost treasure. No place on the planet was too remote, not even the Arctic or the Amazon, and no people too poor or obscure, not even Hondurans and Tibetans, to escape his tight-fisted grasp. And yet in that innocent world of the comic book, every adventure, no matter how twisted the plot, always ended with a light laugh for those duckling heroes and the diverse peoples they encountered on their global travels.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/01/21/trumps-foreign-policy-the-comic-book-edition

His first term he had crappy diplomacy but his second term all diplomacy has been killed with the help of Little Marco and Pistol Pete…

American diplomacy is dead and who knows how long will it take to recover?

I wish I could be optimistic about the future of US diplomacy but I just cannot bring myself to do so….the damage has been done and the wounds will be gaping for a generation…..anything the next president does will be basically a band-aid for a gunshot wound.

Does anyone disagree?

Educate, Agitate

I Read, I Write, You Know

‘cogito ergo agito’

Lots Of B*llshit For 2028

The DNC has decided where the first in the nation vote will be and their decision was South Carolina.

Progressives are not thrilled with this choice….

Democrats just set the opening scene for 2028—and the party’s left flank is not applauding. A key Democratic National Committee rules panel voted Friday to make South Carolina the first presidential primary state, sidelining Nevada and igniting fears among progressives that the move is designed to blunt another Bernie Sanders–style bid. South Carolina is where Sanders was trounced in both 2016 and 2020, and one panel member told Axios the choice risks “shutting down” a progressive contender rather than reflecting “the winds of change” while “the public is swinging left.”

The fight is layered with questions of ideology and race. Critics on the left, including Jacobin writer Branko Marcetic and streamer Hasan Piker, see the decision as an establishment play to block a “left-wing insurgent,” while some DNC members reportedly worried Nevada’s first-in-the-nation status could turbocharge a socialist candidate. Sanders easily won the Nevada caucuses in 2020 with help from organized labor allies, Puck notes. Earlier that month, Sanders won the New Hampshire primaries, with Joe Biden finishing fifth. But Biden went on to score a resounding victory in South Carolina, finishing ahead of Sanders in every county.

South Carolina Democratic Party chair Christale Spain, a former Sanders staffer, argues that a progressive such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could “absolutely” win there—if they master retail politics in the South. The full DNC still has to ratify the calendar, but the deeper test for progressives remains whether they can finally break through with the older Black voters who dominate Southern primaries.

Will this make a difference?

The DNC is a dysfunctional mess and hoping blacks show up to vote will somehow save them.

Even that fossil James Carville sees how screwed up the DNC has become….he has even suggested the Hogg take over the leadership of the DNC.

Hogg was run out of the DNC earlier this year for his extreme views and yet a centrist slug like Carville says he would be a good choice for leader.

I do not necessarily disagree but beyond that I want to know what Carville’s game is….it is not at all like him to side with the more progressive Dems.

He is up to something….or he is got some sort of mental issue that comes with extreme age.

Educate, Agitate

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

“Everyone Is A Bit Marxist…”

The title is a quote from Italian Antonio Gramsci, the Marxist theorist, ideologue, philosopher and journalist, has long been associated exclusively with communism and socialism. And yet his thoughts are showing up in the strange places….the far Right talking points…


The entire quote is….”Everyone is a bit of a Marxist….without being aware of it”

We see this in the presence of Gramsci’s theories and his phrases in speeches and publications.


Viktor Orban, Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister who studied Gramsci in the 1980s, rarely misses an opportunity to speak of the need to fight liberal-left ideas, parties and movements.


Elsewhere, Gramsci’s presence is more implicit. In the 900-page Mandate for Leadership, a document published by Project 2025 — the staffing and policy planning organization aimed at institutionalizing “Trumpism” — there’s no shortage of Gramsci talking points expressed in the inimitable style of the New Right in the United States.


Right-wing Gramsci adherents simplify and vulgarize Gramsci’s thought, reducing it to slogans and simple formulas. In doing so, they are doing what Gramsci expected right-wingers to do under democratic conditions — protect the capitalist status quo while framing “the left” as the cause of all manner of social, economic and geopolitical ills.


This should be another reason to read Gramsci.


The existential climate crisis aside, many of the problems that concerned Gramsci then are eerily similar to the problems that concern us today — a failing global economic system, multiplying military conflict, massive geopolitical shifts and the hollowing of representative political institutions.


https://theconversation.com/why-the-radical-right-has-turned-to-the-teachings-of-an-italian-marxist-thinker-237531


A little more background may be helpful….

Gramsci undertook a series of historical and theoretical reflections on the conditions for revolution in modern states—such as Italy’s—where degrees of popular consent had been achieved. He employed the concept “hegemony” to describe a process of “intellectual and moral leadership” that embedded a ruling class across society. He rejected the economic determinism of classical Marxism in favor of a nuanced political analysis attuned to contingent variation in historical circumstance. Gramsci brought Marxism into dialogue with neo-idealist insights into practical subjectivity and he sketched a revolutionary strategy aimed at preparing a new collective identity.


Interesting how a group that hates ‘Marxists’ turns to them for their inspiration.

Really should not be a surprise since the Trumpites have been doing a Stalin-esque style of political purges to get the ‘proper’ people in places they need.

You should read Gramsci maybe you will learn something.Or not…you see one needs to be able to think to see the conflict and most of those supporters gave up thinking and let the ‘rulers’ do it for them.


Be Smart!


Learn Stuff!

Educate, Agitate

I Read, I Write, You Know


“cognito ergo agito”

Hamilton May Have Been On To Something

****Please keep any abortion comments to yourself this post is about our loss of freedoms….if you comment stick to the post….we already have enough manure being spread****


Year after year we have watched the states go about taking rights away from their residents and few have anything to say about it other than the old ‘state’s rights’ dodge.


One state has stated that the people do not have a fundamental right to vote….while others are taking the freedom of choice away from the voters….etc etc  I am sure that you have some sort of horror story along these lines coming from your state legislature.


That intro leads me to the point of this post….


Hamilton believed that the US should be one strong unit as opposed to smaller units….



Alexander Hamilton believed that America need- ed a strong central government. Instead of let- ting the states mostly govern themselves, he wanted the federal government to hold more power. This led him to support the approval of the Constitution and affected what he did as the country’s first Treasury secretary.


Hamilton believed that a strong Government is necessary to protect and preserve liberty. He regarded anarchy—exemplified in the French Revolution—as freedom’s worst enemy. He feared that the American people, if allowed to freely express an exaggerated concept of liberty, could destroy the benefits of our Revolution.


Hamilton wanted a new national government that had complete political authority. He disliked state governments and believed that they should be eliminated entirely. In fact, Hamilton believed that the perfect union would be one in which there were no states at all.


A government that gives too much power to the common people cannot be trusted. Wealthy, educated, public-spirited men should lead the country. Alexander Hamilton: How strong should our national government be? We should have a strong national government that unties the states and keeps order among the people.



To keep it simple….Hamilton thought the US should be one country under uniform law not individual states with their own constitution and laws.


The American people basically have two sets of laws they must conform to on any given day.


Got it now?


As the title infers I believe that Hamilton was on to something….one country divided into districts with representatives in the capitol to deliver the wants of those districts.


The whole state’s rights thing is just a powder keg waiting to ignite….and it is a smoldering mess now.


Problems that state’s rights promotes…..


Conflict of Authority – The biggest problem that arises when you have two bodies of
government in power is the power struggle. Both central and state government intend to
assert their power over the other which at time causes conflict between them. Even the long-
term conflict between the central and state government can create hurdles in way of national
development and prosperity.


(We see this today with states usurping federal law)


Regionalism Over Patriotism – The mark of a great country is just how patriotic and
prideful the citizens is to be a part of it. Federalism, since it promotes smaller level of
government, it also promotes smaller levels of pride. It can begin to pit one region against
another and take away from the feeling of patriotism that should be present all over the entire
country.


(Red State vs Blue State is making regionalism the priority among certain states….patriotism is gone)


Inequalities Between States – The federal form of government allows for regional
inequalities between different states. For example, instead of education funding throughout
the country being the same, since it is a state issue, some states will spend more, per capita,
on education than other states, causing what could be considered a disparity. The same goes
for other things, as well, such as taxes, health care programs, and welfare programs which
increases regional inequality amongst the different states.


(We see this in most Southern states that are lagging behind most of the wider nation)


The Blockage of Nationalist Policies by States – States can fight against the existence of
certain national laws by challenging them in court, or going out of their way to not enforce
those national laws, or even deliberately obstructing enforcement of national laws


(Again the states are changing voting laws, freedom of choice, and condemning the population into poverty and hunger)


SO I say once again…I believe Hamilton was on to something.

Educate, Agitate

I Read, I Write, You Know


“cognito ergo me agitare”