Strategic Culture

All the plans of nations large and small to prevent a repeat of the so-called Spanish flu of 1918, which ravaged the battlefield trenches of France, have largely proven ineffective.

The domestic embargoing of health care supplies, along with the hobbling of federal health agencies represent individual criminal charges in an indictment of the Trump administration for carrying out “autogenocide” against the American people.

Achieving popularity requires empathy and rationality, elements that politicians of the right-wing, many of whom believe they are “populists,” lack.

The election of Trump as president made a bad situation involving white supremacists and neo-Nazis serving in U.S. law enforcement agencies much worse.

Future historians will scratch their heads when researching the annals and archives of the Trump administration. Trump and his administration often seize on erroneous information and turn them into, in what is in their minds, irrefutable facts.

Just as Trump and his Republican lackeys called the CHAZ protesters “anarchists” and “antifa,” the U.S. ambassador to France at the time of the Paris Commune, Elihu Washburne, referred to the communards as “brigands,” “scoundrels,” and “assassins.”

Although the United States has historically been more than willing to criticize the human rights policies of other countries, it has bristled at attempts to have brought forth in the international body its own human rights outrages.

Even a powerful dictator like Ceausescu was unable to stop a tidal wave of popular anger. Some popular revolutions are often spontaneous occurrences, triggered by the most unlikely of events, and ending with dramatic consequences.

In the era of Covid, virtual diplomacy was on display in India on May 21 when India’s President accepted the credentials of the ambassadors of several countries via video conferencing.

For the weak-minded who do not accept reason and logic, magic is as real as unicorns, elves, and leprechauns. For those on the far-right of politics, elves and unicorns are replaced by secretive cabals who they believe run the world.