The Warfare State & Trump’s Rise to Power
https://consortiumnews.com/2025/03/07/the-warfare-state-trumps-rise-to-power/
While the military industrial complex seems all too natural to most politicians and journalists, Norman Solomon says its consequences have transformed U.S. politics. By Norman Solomon TomDispatch Donald Trump’s power has thrived on the economics, politics, and culture of war.…
#Politics #Afghanistan #BidenAdministration #Campaign2016 #Campaign2024 #Commentary #Gaza #Iraq #Israel #Militarism #Palestine #Terrorism #TrumpAdministration #U.s. #CatherineLutz #CostsOfWarProject #DonaldTrump #ElonMusk #GlobalWarOnTerror #HillaryClinton #JohnMccain #MarkZuckerberg #NormanSolomon #PresidentBarackObama #U.s.PresidentJoeBiden #VicePresidentKamalaHarris
![Moving often means downsizing and making little decisions about what comes with you and what stays. As I was preparing to move from Montreal to Toronto, I decided to clean out my closet and donate what I could. My rule of thumb was that if I hadn’t worn it within the last six months, it was time to give it a new home. I landed on one sweater I’d had since 2008, and no matter how many times I thought about parting ways with it throughout the years, I cannot. In 2008, my father and uncle, who flew in from Paris, met in Washington, D.C. to personally witness the inauguration of the First Black President of the United States. The pair didn’t have tickets to any event nor a planned itinerary, but being a part of the atmosphere, absorbing the energy and the chance to glimpse a once-in-a-lifetime scene from the streets surrounding the White House sufficed. Like any enthusiastic traveller, my dad’s return home was filled with stories and souvenirs for each family member. He handed me a black sweater with President Obama’s face and “The 44th President of the United States” written in grey. I felt such a sense of pride, holding my own piece of history that I could keep for the rest of my life. I felt such a sense of optimism. With Vice-President Kamala Harris as the presumptive Democratic nominee, my optimism is now tempered with the knowledge that we must organize for a better version of democracy centred on honesty and justice. Hope in fiction My sweater is about the same age as my younger sister. I think it’s hard to part ways with it because to me it represented what Canadian historian and Chair of Africana and American Studies at the University of Buffalo, Rinaldo Walcott, might call glimpses of Black freedom , “those moments of the something more that exist inside of the dire conditions of our present Black unfreedom.” We are experiencing a false optimism fueled by representation politics with the announcement of Kamala Harris as the presumptive nominee for the Democratic party. Within 24 hours of announcing her candidacy for president, she raised more than $1 million, and two days later that number had soared to $126 million . My TikTok feed was filled with glowing videos of Vice-President Harris, with cheering comments sections. Groups of Black women and white women for Kamala held fundraising calls, urging each other to show up for VP Harris as a means to save America, save rights and preserve justice. To me, this mass mobilization of support from liberals and progressives represents the hope in fiction—the fictional version of Harris as the sole key to preserving democratic principles and institutions. The hope in her, as a person, a political character, a meme, a brat (?) who has awakened at the 11th hour ready to save America. In this story, she emerged as America’s saviour from an underwhelming vice presidency. The fundraising, the endorsements from prominent Democrats, the online hype, are all signs of a mobilization—under the panic of a potential return to Trump—that is turning Harris into a hero. Like all hero stories, the narrative relies on fiction. Further reading of Walcott’s The Long Emancipation, however, calls us to look at Black freedom as “Blackness’ refusals…to presentative democracy…[and] reformist logics that retain the present shape of the world.” It has been disappointing to see revisionist narratives of her past policies and practices emerge to justify voting for her, or the simple notion that “she’s just not as bad as Trump”. The Marshall Project notes that her history as a “progressive” prosecutor is complicated. German Lopez for Vox writes: “A close examination of Harris’s record shows it’s filled with contradictions. She pushed for programs that helped people find jobs instead of putting them in prison, but also fought to keep people in prison even after they were proved innocent. She refused to pursue the death penalty against a man who killed a police officer, but also defended California’s death penalty system in court. She implemented training programs to address police officer](https://media.mstdn.social/cache/preview_cards/images/064/153/593/original/c831b4b46293ebb9.jpg "Moving often means downsizing and making little decisions about what comes with you and what stays. As I was preparing to move from Montreal to Toronto, I decided to clean out my closet and donate what I could. My rule of thumb was that if I hadn’t worn it within the last six months, it was time to give it a new home. I landed on one sweater I’d had since 2008, and no matter how many times I thought about parting ways with it throughout the years, I cannot. In 2008, my father and uncle, who flew in from Paris, met in Washington, D.C. to personally witness the inauguration of the First Black President of the United States. The pair didn’t have tickets to any event nor a planned itinerary, but being a part of the atmosphere, absorbing the energy and the chance to glimpse a once-in-a-lifetime scene from the streets surrounding the White House sufficed. Like any enthusiastic traveller, my dad’s return home was filled with stories and souvenirs for each family member. He handed me a black sweater with President Obama’s face and “The 44th President of the United States” written in grey. I felt such a sense of pride, holding my own piece of history that I could keep for the rest of my life. I felt such a sense of optimism. With Vice-President Kamala Harris as the presumptive Democratic nominee, my optimism is now tempered with the knowledge that we must organize for a better version of democracy centred on honesty and justice. Hope in fiction My sweater is about the same age as my younger sister. I think it’s hard to part ways with it because to me it represented what Canadian historian and Chair of Africana and American Studies at the University of Buffalo, Rinaldo Walcott, might call glimpses of Black freedom , “those moments of the something more that exist inside of the dire conditions of our present Black unfreedom.” We are experiencing a false optimism fueled by representation politics with the announcement of Kamala Harris as the presumptive nominee for the Democratic party. Within 24 hours of announcing her candidacy for president, she raised more than $1 million, and two days later that number had soared to $126 million . My TikTok feed was filled with glowing videos of Vice-President Harris, with cheering comments sections. Groups of Black women and white women for Kamala held fundraising calls, urging each other to show up for VP Harris as a means to save America, save rights and preserve justice. To me, this mass mobilization of support from liberals and progressives represents the hope in fiction—the fictional version of Harris as the sole key to preserving democratic principles and institutions. The hope in her, as a person, a political character, a meme, a brat (?) who has awakened at the 11th hour ready to save America. In this story, she emerged as America’s saviour from an underwhelming vice presidency. The fundraising, the endorsements from prominent Democrats, the online hype, are all signs of a mobilization—under the panic of a potential return to Trump—that is turning Harris into a hero. Like all hero stories, the narrative relies on fiction. Further reading of Walcott’s The Long Emancipation, however, calls us to look at Black freedom as “Blackness’ refusals…to presentative democracy…[and] reformist logics that retain the present shape of the world.” It has been disappointing to see revisionist narratives of her past policies and practices emerge to justify voting for her, or the simple notion that “she’s just not as bad as Trump”. The Marshall Project notes that her history as a “progressive” prosecutor is complicated. German Lopez for Vox writes: “A close examination of Harris’s record shows it’s filled with contradictions. She pushed for programs that helped people find jobs instead of putting them in prison, but also fought to keep people in prison even after they were proved innocent. She refused to pursue the death penalty against a man who killed a police officer, but also defended California’s death penalty system in court. She implemented training programs to address police officer")