The End of the Republic?

It is a sad state of affairs for the Republic when the only people willing and able to speak the truth, the relevant truth, are its generals.  In the last few months the US military has taken the ideological lead in changing American foreign policy and in calling attention to the most important economic and geo-political issue of our time.  The politicians, journalists and bankers are either afraid, have extra-national interests at heart or are making too much money now to want to disucss the future.

The most dangerous threat to our democracy is the power of AIPAC and its apologists to involve the United States in wars to promote Israeli interests and diminish American power and resources.  The biggest threat to our economic prosperity is the potential for oil demand to outstrip supply.  Instead of being the most talked about, written about, argued about subjects in our country, these topics are generally left out of mainstream political and journalistic discourse.

How did this happen?  Why has our media and political class avoided the two 800lb gorillas staring us in the face?  Only our military has the courage to discuss them publicly.  In the last few months the US Military has warned us that we are very close to reaching peak oil, and that the Israeli dominance of our foreign policy is damaging us as a nation.  The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune and the LA Times don’t like editorializing about the power of AIPAC or Peak Oil.  For them it's not news.

X - People try to put us d-down

In 1967 Time Magazine named the Baby Boomer Generation “Man of the Year”.  It was the Summer of Love; they were trying to reach Nirvana by various means, fighting a war in Southeast Asia while protesting it at the same time and making some memorable music in the meantime. As Clair Raines noted “never before in history had youth been so idealized as they were at this moment.”

Their parents were the Great Generation. The most hallowed American generation since the Revolution. They stormed the beaches at Normandy, they ruled the world. As one of them put it well on a wintry January day “born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace...”

Grandchildren of the Great Generation, children of the Boomers, Generation X was destined for mediocrity. The generation of Van Halen and Bon Jovi neither fought in a major war nor fought the idea of war itself and will probably be most remembered for “in real dollars, this generation's men made less (by 12%) than their fathers had at that same age in 1974, thus reversing a historical trend.”

Hunter S. Thompson and Matt Taibbi - A Tribute to Gonzo

The other day I clicked on a link to Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone piece, Obama’s Big Sellout, and to my surprise, it sent me to the home page of Rolling Stone (this link will bring you to a free re-print of the article). The magazine decided to put all their archives online, but for a price, and that included most of Taibbi’s work.

Hunter S. Thompson was the king and founder of Gonzo journalism. If you’ve never read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or Hells Angels, you are in for a real treat. It’s first person journalism where the journalist is real part of the story, and Hunter S. Thompson was some story.

No doubt Matt Taibbi was attracted to Rolling Stone and the mystique of Thompson’s legacy.

Joe Lieberman's Family

Poster Says “Warning! A PLO agent in the White House.”

In March of 2010 the the Israeli Interior Ministry decided to announce the construction of 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem while United States Vice President Joe Biden was on a high profile official visit to Israel. Should Americans care who builds what in Israel? Why does our Vice President waste his time in this insignificant country of 7.5 million people that is neither an important trading partner nor military ally?

But this country seems to think they are very important. They aren't even impressed with the fact that the world's most powerful country sent its Vice President on an official visit. Knesset Deputy Speaker Danny Danon told the Washington Post "While we welcome Vice President Biden, a longtime friend and supporter of Israel, we see it as nothing short of an insult that President Obama himself is not coming."

CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff in January. Basically, he said this small, strategically and economically unimportant country was costing US lives, "growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel"