AMERICAN STUDIES

BRYAN DYNE —Yet for all his rhetoric, Newsom has helped expand the fossil fuel industry in California along similar lines to Trump’s policies nationally. During his first 10 months in office, Newsom approved 33 percent more new oil and gas drilling permits than his predecessor, Jerry Brown. He also dropped a proposal from earlier this year to further regulate the industry after his administration received a letter from the California Independent Petroleum Association, an oil and gas lobbying group, urging him to do so. The flagship for such hypocrisy is the “Biden Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice” put out by Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. It asserts that a “Green New Deal is a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face,” and claims that Biden will “[e]nsure the US achieves a 100 percent clean energy economy and reaches net-zero emissions no later than 2050.” Readers should recall the legacy of the Obama-Biden administration on environmental policy before expecting Biden to carry out any of this platform. During their second year in office they spearheaded the efforts to conceal the full extent of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the largest oil spill to date in the Gulf of Mexico, which caused hundreds of billions of dollars in damages to the entire region.

DAVID MATTSON—All of this traces back—at least in a small way—to Mountain Creek, the cow farmer I was observing, and the deeper history of how European colonists despoiled the mountain West. The specifics matter here because this mini-drama set in the magnificent mountains of Montana comes as close as any to being an exemplar of a contemporary malaise featuring the romanticized West, the mythologized cowboy, and our national infatuation with both.

A Minneapolis judge is moving forward with jury selection in the 2nd degree murder trial of the cop that killed George Floyd. Ai the height of protests, Minneapolis city council members vowed to disband the local police force. However, “there’s nothing being disbanded, dismantled or defunded, unfortunately, at this time,” said Sam Martinez, of the Twin Cities Coalition for Justice for Jamar Clark, a young Black man killed by cops five years ago. “We let the community know that what happened to George Floyd wasn’t going to stop unless the community has control of the police,” said Martinez.

AHJAMU UMI—And, those NBA players, who came very close to voting to cancel the entire rest of their season, something that would have been an overwhelmingly powerful act, instead will resume playing.  And apparently it was that prince of Black bourgeoisie politics – Barack Obama – who helped convince these NBA players such as LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard, etc., to return to the court.  So, thanks to Obama’s influence, instead of a militant direct action, what we are left with is NBA arenas being set up as voting centers.  Centers that give us the option of choosing an ignorant fascist or a neo-liberal.  Centers that ask us to accept that a former prosecutor, who has played a hand in incarcerating countless numbers of African and other poor people, is now going to do something to bring us closure to police terrorism against us.  Maybe those people believe locking us up is progress beyond just killing us on the street?

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—In a recent interview with US Department of Defense newspaper Stars and Stripes, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said it’s important to keep troops in the Middle East to fight terrorism, and that it’s likely that America’s bloated military budget will not only remain at its current size but may actually increase under his presidency due to the need to focus on “near peer” threats like China and Russia. This is not a deviation in messaging from Biden and his crack team of beltway string-pullers, but a continuation of already established patterns.