GARY LEUPP—Those of us who grew up in the 60s recall the right-wing slogan, directed against critics of the Vietnam War, “America—love it or leave it!” The simple logic being that people complaining about the country didn’t belong in what should have been a solid landscape of pro-war nationalism. You’d think the stupidity of that slogan, implicitly a call for slavish devotion to the state, would be obvious in 2019. But no, it’s not. Trump has revived it, testing its resonance.
US EXCEPTIONALISM
-
-
GEORGE BURCHETT—I first visited the DPRK in September 2002 with my son Graham. We arrived from Sydney, Australia, where we were living at the time. I must confess that I was a little bit apprehensive. I had lived in Australia since 1985 and had had to endure an endless and sustained demonization campaign against my father, Wilfred Burchett. He was never forgiven by the Australian establishment and its media etc. enforcers for reporting the ceasefire talks to end the Korean War from the North Korean-Chinese side.
-
RON UNZ—Once we recognize that weakening the media is a primary strategic goal, an obvious corollary is that other anti-establishment groups facing the same challenges become natural, if perhaps temporary, allies. Such unexpected tactical alliances may drawn from across a wide range of different political and ideological perspectives—Left, Right, or otherwise—and despite the component groups having longer-term goals that are orthogonal or even conflicting.
-
With Pakistan’s prime minister at his side, Trump threatens to wipe Afghanistan “off the face of the Earth”
16 minutes readTrump’s Monday remarks are only his latest threat to annihilate a foreign country and reveal that the US president—who has ordered a $1 trillion “modernization” of the US nuclear arsenal and the US withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia—is actively considering unleashing nuclear violence to forestall the collapse of US global hegemony.
-
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Brighter US-Iran Prospects
20 minutes readPATRICK LAWRENCE—Prior to his first summit with Kim, Trump was the fire-breather. As he repeatedly threatened the North with obliteration, “fire and fury,” and much else, naval task forces and nuclear-capable bomber squadrons operated perilously close to the North’s territorial waters and airspace. But the mid–2018 summit in Singapore radically shifted the administration’s position. While Bolton and Pompeo sabotaged the second Trump–Kim summit, held in Hanoi last February, Trump continues to press for the top-down diplomacy he plainly favors, as his informal encounter with Kim last month at the 38th parallel attests.