Features

Several weeks ago, I was invited to participate in my first podcast—an event hosted by World BEYOND War. WBW is a global organization devoted to promoting peaceful alternatives to local and geopolitical conflicts. WBW's concerns have been voiced by none other than Martin Sheen, who appears in a number of WBW videos. Here's one example: 

Martin Sheen Talks to World Beyond War 

The participants (myself included) were all members of the WBW board. They included: Donnal Walter (Arkansas), Odile Hugonot Haber (Michigan), John Reuwer (Vermont), Alice Slater (New York) and our host, Marc Eliot Stein. We were invited to discourse on matters including "Trumpism, cultural divides, the Green New Deal, deeper issues and hopeful solutions."

There were five large topic areas on the discussion list but, as it turned out, the panel generated so many thoughts and ideas that we never got past the second question in the hour-long session. 

Since I put a good amount of time reflecting on responses to the five major themes, I'd like to put these thoughts on record. With your kind forbearance, here are my talking points from WBW's "This Is America" podcast: 

Episode 20: This Is America 

By way of introduction, I'm a long-time activist and journalist based in Berkeley, California. I'm the founding editor of Earth Island Journal and a co-founder of Environmentalists Against War, a global coalition of more than 100 peace organizations founded in 2003. 

In 1964, I was one of the 800 students arrested during the Free Speech Movement sit-in sit-in at the University of California. The next year, I stood in front of the first troop train to come through Berkeley, carrying soldiers to Washington's Vietnam War. 

The first train barreled through without stopping as protesters (and police) jumped from the tracks. Other trains followed, but each time a train appeared, the size of the protests continued to increase until, after the fourth attempt, the Pentagon was forced to surrender. 

We literally derailed part of the War Machine. 

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I became a member of the World BEYOND War board because WBW combines the tools of action, witness, and problem-solving—a powerful triad that, as I know from personal experience, actually works. 

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Over centuries, armies large and small have demonstrated that war doesn't work. This leads to the question: "If war doesn't work, why do we keep employing it?" 

World BEYOND War offers a different path—a Global Security System: An Alternative to War built on creating "cultures of peace" and nonviolent conflict management. 

• • • 

What is the historical significance of our current constitutional crisis? Is USA becoming a failed state?  

The crisis is institutional. We are not a real democracy. Five of 45 presidents have assumed power without winning the popular vote. The Electoral College is an anti-democratic institution. We need to abolish the college and honor the national popular vote. It doesn't take a Constitution Amendment. Sixteen states and the District of Colombia have already joined the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. The NPV would become active once enough states have joined to consolidate 270 state electors. 

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Even before the pandemic struck, the US had become a Failed State. Donald Trump rode to power by leveraging the Failed State meme and promising to "Make America Great Again." Instead, he's made America Hate Again. 

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In Trump's world, things are either "tremendous" or "disgraceful." But these extremist terms are never defined. 

Let's try a definition. The US makes a claim to "Exceptionalism"—to being "the one, indispensible country." Many people in the world would agree that the US is exceptional—exceptionally dangerous, murderous, greedy, imperialistic, and heartless. 

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Consider some examples of American exceptionalism: Among industrialized nations, we have the greatest income inequality, highest poverty rate, greatest number of children in poverty, lowest social mobility, highest healthcare costs, highest obesity rates, highest dependence on anti-depressant drugs, abiding gender and racial inequality, largest number of jailed prisoners, epidemic gun violence, soaring murder rates, and highest rate of military spending. 

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America's wealth is a myth, maintained by the printing presses of the Federal Reserve. In FY 2020, the federal deficit topped $1 trillion, compared with $600 billion during President Obama’s last year in office. 

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Are the Black Lives Matter movement or the climate change movement or the antiwar movements in the USA making a positive difference? 

Both movements have raised an abundance of what the late John Lewis called "good trouble." 

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The Environmental Movement has been more successful in blocking harmful laws and passing progressive legislation. In part, this is because the environment is an issue that concerns everyone—even the people who profit off climate-changing pollution. 

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The racial issue is, unavoidably, more divisive, and appeals to some peoples' worst instincts in the name of White Supremacy. 

White Supremacy was responsible for the genocide and removal of Native Americans and continues to feed the historic oppression of slavery and persistent racism against people of color, from California's Chinese Exclusion Act to Donald Trump's Muslim Ban, to the separation of hundreds of immigrant families detained at our borders. 

• • • 

Trump has used the Black Lives protests to divide the country. Instead of addressing the root causes of the protests—institutional racism and police brutality —he has resorted to calling the protesters—and their Democratic and progressive supporters—"socialists," "communists," "terrorists," "anarchists," and "rioters," out to "destroy America." He has openly called on his armed supporters to "stand by" and prepare to "Liberate" Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia—and other states governed by Democrats. 

• • • 

Is there a reasonable hope that a Biden/Harris administration with Anthony Blinken as Secretary of State will make good decisions? 

I like the fact that Tony Blinken did a Sesame Street sketch with Grover. I think it's cool that he plays guitar and sings in a band that performs classics like "Hoochi Coochi Man." But Blinken's history shows him to be a member of the warmonger tribe. He supported the destruction of Libya, the invasion of Iraq, the US-backed arming of Saudi Arabia, and the Saudi's horrific and continuing war in Yemen. The Quincy Institute has described Blinken as being "more of an interventionist" than either Barack Obama or Joe Biden. 

• • • 

We need a Secretary of Defense who will compel the Pentagon to submit a credible audit—after decades of wasteful, unaudited spending. We need leaders who will cut the Pentagon's budget and use the savings to fund human needs not human greed. Year after year, the military routinely burns through more than half of the country's discretionary budget. Half of the Pentagon's massive budget flows directly into the pockets of corporate war contractors. We need leaders who will stand up to the Military-Industrial complex. And talk about closing some of the 800 military bases we have built around the world—including eleven active bases and "military points" inside Syria! 

• • • 

Over our entire history, there have only been 16 years during which the US has not been actively waging wars against people in other countries. There are 193 members of the United Nations. Over the past two centuries, the US has attacked, invaded, policed, overthrown or occupied 62 of them. If the military's goal was to "spread freedom and democracy" the most democratic countries on Earth would be Panama and Colombia, both of which have been invaded by US troops more than nine times each. 

• • • 

Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke the truth when he called the US the world's "greatest purveyor of violence." In 2019, Jimmy Carter responded to Donald Trump's anti-China rants by pointing out that the US has been "the most warlike nation in the history of the world. . . . Since 1979, do you know how many times China has been at war with anybody? None. And we have stayed at war." 

• • • 

Is it reasonable to hope that Biden might exercise better judgment than to rely on former staffers who promoted the concept of the US as the "World's Policeman"? Well, it's going to take more than hope. It will take a sustained howl of protest from constituent Democrats and Green Deal progressives to promote candidates who will break from the party's corporate business-as-usual players and create some breathing room for candidates who will hold big business and the War Machine to account. 

• • • 

Leaving Washington DC politics aside, what is going on all over the USA? Tell us what you observe in your own region, and among your own friends and relatives. 

My home state, California, is best known for its scenery and its leading-edge industries—from Hollywood to Silicon Valley—so it may come as a surprise to learn that California is also one of the world’s most militarized states. California hosts 32 major military bases with facilities covering nearly 6,000 square miles.  

• • • 

We host nearly eight percent of the country’s 420 domestic military bases. One base, the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station, occupies more than 1.1 million acres—a stretch of land larger than the entire state of Rhode Island. 

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California is home to nearly 190,000 active duty and reserve troops—the largest concentration in the country. California is also home to more than 30,000 weapons contractors including Lockheed-Martin, Northrop-Grumman, Raytheon, and General Dynamics. 

• • • 

According to the Governor's Military Council (yes, there really is such a thing), in 2018, the Pentagon, Homeland Security, and the Department of Veterans Affairs accounted for nearly 800,000 in-state jobs and contributed $167 billion to the State's economy. 

So it looks like the Golden State could be called the Olive Drab State. 

• • • 

Impediments to a Peaceful Society 

If we want to demilitarize our culture we've got to start demilitarizing our vocabulary. 

Every week I get messages from anti-war groups that include phrases like:
"We're fighting for you." "We're spearheading the charge for nonviolence." "We're beating-back the forces of imperialism." 

We talk about high-caliber efforts on the battlefield of ideas to create media bombshells that are right on target. We salute straight-shooters who don't go off half-cocked but know how to target an audience and aim for total victory while mounting a resistance that rolls out the heavy artillery to blast holes in the opposition's strategy. 

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Here's another cultural impediment to sustained organizing: For generations, American cinema has promoted stories of combat and conflict—from soldiers to Superheros—and trained us to believe that, no matter how bleak the situation, there's no need to get up off the sofa and become an agent of change. It will all work out somehow thanks to the miracle of the "Hollywood ending." 

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The US economy is fueled by addictions. Capitalism has become an exercise in Addictionomics, with companies shamelessly profiting off of "habit-forming" products designed to enshrine the consumption of alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, sugar, and salt. 

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Television and social media keep human brains entrained by glowing screens, feed-back loops, visual eye-candy, addictive click-bait and doomscrolling. 

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The corporate medical establishment benefits from the illnesses and diseases caused by addictions—with "health maintenance" bringing in more money than "disease prevention." 

What solutions can we offer? 

I think it's fair to say that the fate of our country—and the fate or our entire planet—rides on the outcome of two Senate races in Georgia. 

If Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock win the seats now held by strident Trumpists Perdue and Loeffler, it could spell an end to GOP leader Mitch McConnell's destructive rule as "the Grim Reaper" of progressive legislation. 

If the two Democrats win, the Senate would be evenly divided and legislation involving the environment, the economy, health and foreign policy would be decided by Kamala Harris' tie-breaking Vice-presidential vote. [Note: Major legislation would require a 60-vote majority, necessitating a significant bipartisan effort.] 

If the Senate retains a Republican majority—by even the smallest of margins—the expressed goals of the Biden-Harris ticket and the hopes of the Berniecrats and the Green New Dealers will be forever dashed—along with any hopes to save the planet from war, pestilence, plague, hunger, annihilating global wars, and extreme, life-extinguishing climate change. 

• • • 

Ordinary Americans need to pay more attention to the world outside our borders. 

We should be prepared to answer the question painted on a banner held by survivors of a US bombing in the Middle East: "America! Ask why you are hated!" 

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We should be joining the European Union in condemning the ongoing political assassination of Iranian scientists. 

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We need to speak out in defense of peace treaties that Trump has abrogated—including the Iran Nuclear Deal, the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and the US-Russia Open Skies Treaty. 

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As Sharon Tennison of the Center for Citizen Initiatives recently observed: 

"Although we American citizens pay little attention to treaties, Russian citizens do. I remember when Ambassador Matlock stood in Washington, DC in 2016 and said, “Nothing will change unless many American citizens themselves get involved" (and push Congress and policymakers to act differently). So far this hasn’t happened." 

• • • 

America First! is really just another way of saying "Me First!" In addition to #MeToo we have to deal with #MeFirst and #MeOnly. We see this being played out whenever people gather in crowds to party without facemasks, insisting that it is their Trump-given right to do so. 

Thanks to Trump, we are no longer the United States. We have become the Divided States of America. Instead of USA! USA! Our chant should be DSA! DSA! Hopefully, a healing time awaits us. 

• • • 

We live inside a myth: The not-to-be-questioned belief that America is a uniquely god-blessed guardian of global freedom. 

We are told that, like our country, we are an exceptional people and it is our responsibility and duty to spread freedom and democracy around the globe. 

• • • 

The historical and present truth is the US has generally acted as a greedy and brutal empire. We are not a Popular Democracy. We are what I would call a Corporate Militocracy.