Among the worldâs historically stable democracies, America has a particularly complicated relationship with the idea of political violence. This is, after all, a country born out of violent struggle, as the T-shirts and bumper stickers and speeches at any Republican event endlessly attest. This is also a country where the major expansions of civil rights, from Emancipation to desegregation, happened under the fact or threat of state violence, and where few on the left are willing to categorically condemn violent protest in the name of social justice. It is a country where many still nod at Thomas Jeffersonâs aphorism that âThe tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants,â or to Malcolm X vowing âby any means necessary.â (...)
In a June survey, the political scientists Nathan P. Kalmoe and Lilliana Mason, who have conducted a yearslong study exploring American attitudes toward political violence, found that about 20 percent of respondents believed that political violence was at least sometimes justified. A full 60 percent â up from 40 percent four years ago â believed it was at least sometimes justified if people from the other political party committed an act of violence first, figures that varied little between Republicans and Democrats. In their discomfiting 2022 book âRadical American Partisanship,â they argue that ârather than asking whether Americans support political violence, the better question is when.â (...)
In February 2021, Kalmoe and Mason, the political scientists, asked a sample of Americans whether it was justified for members of their party to kill opposing political leaders to advance their political goals. Twelve percent of Republicans and 11 percent of Democrats replied that it was. âGeneralizing to the population of American partisans,â they write, âmeans roughly 20 million who endorse assassinating U.S. leaders.â
If the acceptance of political violence in America has been with us since the beginning, its contours have changed, in important and alarming ways. Since the 1990s, as Americans have sorted themselves into sharply diverging ideological and cultural camps along partisan lines, citizens on opposite sides of this divide have come to think of each other in decreasingly human terms. In 2017, Kalmoe and Mason found that 60 percent of Republicans and Democrats believed that the other party was a âthreatâ; 40 percent believed it was âevilâ; 20 percent believed its members were ânot human.â All three figures rose over Trumpâs presidency â more for Republicans than Democrats, but not by much.
The result is a climate of what Kalmoe and Mason call âmoral disengagement.â It is not violence, but an essential precursor, and it has reshaped the language of political violence in this country â and its targets. Rhetoric that two or three decades ago might have been directed at the federal government is now directed at other partisans, too.
Neocons are melting down over JD Vance Some of the reflexive militarism of Bush-Cheney era is fading and many Republicans are having a hard time with it
Some story editor /producer must have had Blues Brothers in the back of their mind.
Allthewhile I think of a well manufactured burrito, potentially being of a higher mean vibration spiritually, than Umrika's prime time entertainment blasted throughout all available frequencies in the neighbourhood and even around the corner, even though they don't come along for free.
No, I don't want your karma. Not anyone's.
Understanding the intentions of a potential adversary is one of the most important yet most difficult challenges that any statesman faces. Underestimating a stateâs aggressive intent can discourage the prudent defensive preparations necessary to deter a war, as happened in the prelude to World War II. Overestimating it can produce a cycle of increasingly threatening military measures that spirals into a conflict neither side has sought, as happened in the run up to World War I.
Finding the sweet spot between these poles is critical in dealing with Russian intentions toward NATO, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary this week at a summit meeting in Washington. Getting the balance between deterrence and diplomacy right is particularly important given Russiaâs massive arsenal of nuclear weapons, which makes the stakes of any descent into direct conflict between Russia and NATO potentially existential.
But to judge from NATO rhetoric, no such delicate balance is required: the Russia challenge is regarded as a modern reprise of Nazi Germanyâs aggression, and the chief danger facing the alliance is thought to be the temptation to appease and thereby invite further Russian conquest. Hence President Bidenâs recent assertion that if the Russian military is not stopped decisively in Ukraine, it will âmove on to Poland and other places.â (...)
To imagine that Russia would initiate a war with NATO when it has shown little ability to conquer, let alone occupy and govern, the vast bulk of Ukrainian territory is to impute a degree of irrationality to the Kremlin well beyond what it has demonstrated to date.
Dairy farming in the US as it is could well be the next step in gain-of-function produce of lethal viruses (H5N1++) from the US on a world-wide industrial scale after Covid - which Umricans were so busy attributing to China - knowingly keeping seir customers in se dark, as usual.
Peace, Sherlock.
OMG did I repeat any "substantial" parts from your article-link? If so, it wasn't intended, just a spontaneous "ai jerk-off" from my machine I guess. Remember, I can't be sentient.
That's not really new. It only is, if you don't know (and never met world-) cinema of various sources, most oftenly labelled as "foreign", and sometimes "independent film". The Umrican English language even goes so far, as to import a French word, "auteur" which (of course) means 'author' ...in turn reminds us, there are no / haven't been any true 'authors' in Hollywood from the get-go. Only copy-cats and marketing coke-heads, drunk of dollars.
That's a typical feature of US-American "understanding" of human culture:
There's nothing beyond, so stay on the sofa, or varied as, nothing to see here folks move on as we already keep being the greatest nation on earth anyway.
We're really open for foreign cultures to go extinct while we thrive (we're built on principles). Make my day & Happy Independence Day all in one, America, I love you.
âThe easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most peopleâs minds is to let it go through the medium of an entertainment picture when they do not realize that they are being propagandized,â explained Elmer Davis, a renowned CBS broadcaster, who had just been named director of the Office of War Information (OWI), a Pentagon program created on June 13, 1942, six months after Pearl Harbor.
Later in 1953, as the Cold War was in full swing, President Dwight D. Eisenhower commented on the burgeoning partnership between Hollywood and the Pentagon by stating that, "the hand of government must be carefully concealed and (â¦) wholly eliminated," adding that the engagement should "be done through arrangements with all sorts of privately operated enterprises in the field of entertainment, dramatics, music and so on."
Thus, the president who coined the term âmilitary industrial complex,â was, in fact, one of the first major proponents of what would later be called the military entertainment complex or the militainment industry.
Today, this militainment industry is thriving. From Top Gun to the Marvel franchise and even shows like Extreme Makeover, the Pentagon has been able to shape the narratives of more than 2,500 movies and TV shows. No one knows this better than Roger Stahl, the University of Georgiaâs Communications Studies Department Head, and author of Militainment Inc. With University of Bath lecturer and Workers Party Candidate Matthew Alford, investigative journalist Tom Secker, and others, Stahl created âTheaters of War,â a concise 87-minute documentary in which he methodically dissects our modern militainment industry, showing the behemoth it has become.
Responsible Statecraft talked to Stahl, Alford, and Secker about the ways our TV screens are weaponized through the Military Entertainment Complexâs oversight over and control of Hollywood scripts and production agreements. (...)
Malarkey: "The only thing I've denied Israel was 2000 pound bombs. They don't work very well in populated areas. They kill a lot of innocent people. We're providing Israel with all the weapons they need and when they need them." That looks like 14000 of them.
Stop Listening to David Petraeus The self-promoting ex-general continues to rewrite history, suggesting that Israel deploy an Iraq-style 'surge' in Gaza
In reality, what Petraeus and his co-authors penned was an example of why a lessons-based approachto history is wrongheaded at best and dangerous at worst. It also highlights how, nearly 15 years after U.S. troops departed Iraq, the retired general still aspires to both control and revise the narrative over Americaâs disastrous intervention in Middle Eastern affairs. (...)
So how can Netanyahu learn from American âsuccessesâ in Iraq? Of course, by examining the 2007 âsurgeâ under Petraeusâs command. What follows in the Foreign Affairs article are three broad âlessonsâ that, not surprisingly, form the central pillars of the surge myth that the general and his acolytes have advanced for more than a decade now.
