IMHO, I think the adoption of the Second Amendment has to be read in the context of a) no standing Federal army; b) Shay's Rebellion (1786); c) slave revolts such as the 1739 Stono Rebellion; and d) the 1772 Gaspee Affair together with 1775 Lexington and Concord. And all the surrounding myths then, later, and now.

Whether any of that history and myth should be controlling today is another matter.

On a public health level, vaccines are not about protecting an individual, but about protecting society. But you can't sell that to a highly individualistic society like the US, especially to a certain wing/faction of that society. Unfortunately.

Throw in politicians desperately trying to turn off the bad news coming out of long-term care facilities, and you get vaccination programs aimed at halting bad news, not at ending the pandemic. The latter would focus shots on disease vectors, not on subjects with comorbidities whose illnesses more often turn fatal - and into bad numbers.

 A few Modest Proposals:

US Senate stays at two Senators per state. Votes in the US Senate are weighted by state population. Call it the "US Senate Weighted Vote - USSWV." John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis each get one USSWV, as they're from Wyoming. Bernie Sanders gets 1.1 USSWV. Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla get 66.1 USSWV each. There are (about) 1093 USSWV; laws pass with a majority of USSWV.

Let politicians draw any odd shape they want for electoral districts, as long as they have uniform populations. If the GOP or Democratic candidate wins with more than 2/3 of the votes cast, they are disqualified and the candidate with the second-highest vote total is elected.

Juries are more or less randomly selected from qualified citizens to determine the outcome of some of the weighiest issues placed before the commonwealth. Let's pick legislators the same way.

Spouses are barred from running for offices previously held by the other spouse.

Book Review: The Longest Winter: The Battle of the Bulge and the Epic Story of World War II's Most Decorated Platoon (Hardcover) by Alex Kershaw

When Kershaw is relating the stories of the members of the I&R platoon (Intelligence and Recon (scout) 394th Infantry regiment, 99th Division, US Army) , drawing on his personal interviews with the veterans, the book is pretty good. At that point, it is a compelling story of men under fire and duress. When he is setting the larger context, drawing on secondary sources, the story is trite and filled with niggling errors.

I also disliked the amount of attention given to Skorzeny and SS Col. Peiper. In particular, Kershaw imples that Peiper was unfairly targeted by "Communists" after the war. Here's the thing: a commanding officer is responsible for the behavior of ALL the troops under his command. It does not matter if Peiper was not personally present at the Malmedy Massacre, or that he did not order the killings of POWs. When atrocities occured, it was Peiper's responsibility to punish those of his subordinates who transgressed. Op. cit. Jadranko Prlić, Rasim Delić, Atif Dudaković, Sakib Mahmuljin - all convicted of war crimes during the Bosnian War (1992-5) for their failure to adequately supervise troops under their command. And Prlić was a politician, not an army commander in the field. (I also met all four after the war.) [N.b.: Dudaković has been charged; he has not been tried as of this writing.]

 Posted (to FB) February 1:

Now that New START has been extended, good next largely unilateral* steps include:

1) Declarative moratorium on nuclear testing and prepare to submit the CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) to the Senate;

2) End deployment of and funding for new nuclear warhead designs;

3) End the triad by phasing out land-based ICBMs;

4) Declare a No First Use policy;

5) Declare like-for-like retalitory policy;

6) End "Launch on Warning" policy;

7) Withdraw tactical nuclear weapons from Europe (starting with Turkey!);

8) Re-enter the Open Skies Treaty (technically a conventional step);

9) Begin work on new Nuclear strategy (Nuclear Posture Review);

10) Eliminate (burn as fuel) fissile material from excess "retired" US warheads.

That's off the top of my head.

 

Book Review: Behold, America: The Entangled History of “America First” and “The American Dream” by Sarah Churchwell

An Etymological Essay at Book Length

Churchwell's 2018 book looks at these two tropes, from their origins around 1900, the peak of “America First” in the speeches of isolationist Charles Lindbergh in 1941, to the proclaimed “death” of the American Dream and renewed promotion of “America First” in 2015 by the loser of the 2020 Presidential election. Churchwell examines these two terms through their use in public discourse throughout the 20^th century, focusing on their definition over time. She argues that “The American Dream” is the social contract, a moral economy, that balances liberty and freedom, equality and justice, but that its meaning has been diverted and perverted, especially since the Second World War, to mean the possibility of becoming exceedingly, excessively rich. That America and Americans have redefined Calvinism as “If you are rich, it is God rewarding you for your virtues” and making “The American Dream” synonymous with that redefined doctrine. On the other hand, “America First” and its close relative “100% American” = “100% white” – and Nordic or “Aryan”* white at that. (Lindbergh's public leadership of the “America First” campaign collapsed a few months before the attack on Pearl Harbor after he delivered an anti-Semitic speech in Des Moines.)

I rather liked the opening of Chapter 6, “America First 1920-1923: The Simplicity of Government” which opens with the tale of President Harding, who in “his 1920 'America first' campaign,[] notoriously announced that 'government is a very simple thing,'” further “promising to run the American government like a business.” Now, where have we heard that lately?

Churchwell reminds us of the lasting value of the works of Sinclair Lewis, Walter Lippman, and Dorothy Thompson. All were pronounced anti-Fascists, and their observations hold true today as applied to the heirs of the reactionary “100% American” & “America First” legacies.


* “Aryan” was a term applied to themselves by ancient Indo-Iranian peoples. Somehow I am not surprised that its misapplication as a synonym for “Nordic” was popularized by a graduate of the University of Geneva (who was born in England, raised in France, and settled in Germany), whose B.Sc. thesis was shown to be mystical nonsense.

Book Review:  Imperialism: A Study ... is the iconoclastic 1902 work from British economist J.A. Hobson. Today it is more generally known for having inspired Vladimir Lenin to write his 1916 treatise, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. Secondarily, Hobson advanced his theory that the British investor class had "oversaved," with domestic production outstripping domestic consumption, in consequence thereof leading the investors to seek investment opportunities overseas: first in Europe and from 1870 onward in Africa and Asia - the "tropics". A Socialist, Hobson argued that the funds should have been directed homeward by increasing the income placed at the disposition and advantage of the working classes, thereby increasing domestic consumption to match production.

An exhaustive (and exhausting) reading of the text reveals a persistent shadowed motivation: British investment overseas will empower the "black" and "yellow" races, literally imperilling "white civilization." While Hobson is rightfully criticized for anti-Semitism in his earlier book on the Boer War (UK vs ethnic Dutch settlers in South Africa, 1899-1901), blaming the war on "Jewish financiers," such blatant anti-Semitism is missing from "Imperialism." It is beyond curious that modern reviewers of Imperialism so blithely skate past the racism that persists throughout the text.

Hobson supports "colonisation" as opposed to imperialism, which he sees as white families settling in temperate climes - without regard for extant aborginal society and culture.

Hobson's analysis of British imperialism - that is to say, abusive exploitation - of Africa is extensive, cogent and well-supported by citations. (Part II, Chapter IV - "Imperialism and the Lower Races.") Not so the following Chapter on "Imperialism in Asia," which is painted on a phantasmagorical background of an innately corrupt India and a peaceful, wise and complacent China robbed of its innocence and riches by European buccaneers.

Hobson has both an eye and a pen for a good turn of phrase.

Pithy metaphor:

"A coma accompanied by fits." Miss Mary Kingsley on British policy in the West African colonies. p. 128

Insouciant nationalism:

"Probably every one would agree that an Englishman would be right in considering his way of looking at the world and at life better than that of the Maori or Hottentot, and no one will object in the abstract to England doing her best to impose her better and higher view on those savages." (Goes on to accord Belgians, Germans, Nordics the same lack of disrespect, if at a higher step.) Earl Grey on Hubert Harvey of the British South African Chartered Company, p. 167

Outrageous sanctimony:

"Our only programme is that of the moral and material regeneration of the country." King Leopold II of Belgium, referencing the Congo. p. 209

{I cannot praise too highly King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild in refutation of this hypocrisy.}

Damnation of Populism:

They are no longer seriously frightened by the power of the people as implied by a popular franchise, nor are they prepared to conciliate it by further taxes on property; .... 'Panem et circenses' interpreted into English means cheap booze and Mafficking (Mafeking, Siege of: ed.). Popular education, instead of serving as a defence, is an incitement towards Imperialism; it has opened up a panorama of vulgar pride and crude sensationalism to a great inert mass who see current history and the tangled maze of world movements with dim, bewildered eyes, and are the inevitable dupes of the able organised interests who can lure, or scare, or drive them into any convenient course. p. 107

Fake News:

Imperialism is based upon a persistent misrepresentation of facts and forces chiefly through a most refined process of selection, exaggeration, and attenuation, directed by interested cliques and persons so as to distort the face of history. The gravest peril of Imperialism lies in the state of mind of a nation which has become habituated to this deception and which has rendered itself incapable of self-criticism. p. 223

Prophesy:

"[China] may turn upon her civiliser [.] .... [T]here is no consideration, theoretic or practical, to prevent British capital from transferring itself to China, provided it can find there a cheaper or more efficient supply of labour, or even to prevent Chinese capital with Chinese labour from ousting Britsh produce [.] ....

China might so turn the tables upon the Western industrial nations, and, either by adopting their capital and organisers or, as is more probable, by substituting her own, might flood their markets with her cheaper manufacturers, and refusing their imports in exchange might take her payments in liens upon their capital, reversing the earlier process of investment until she gradually obtained financial control over her quondam patrons and civilisers. This is no idle speculation." pp 329-330

And Condemnation of the "Upper" Class:

" ... vulgar ostentation, domineering demeanour and corrupting largesse to dazzle and degrade the life of our people." p. 158