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Bruce’s Ten Hot Takes for October 19, 2023

hot takes

President Biden says we must hold Russia, Iran, and Hamas accountable.” No one bothers to ask who will hold the United States accountable.

Biden continues to say Hamas doesn’t represent Palestinians. Are we sure about that?

Biden says the United States opposes all forms of hate. Really? What about our own hate; hate that left hundreds of thousands of people dead in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Americans are building the “arsenal of democracy,” Biden says. Evidently, democracy comes through violence and bloodshed.

American leaders wrongly assume that our form of democracy, with its commitment to militarism and capitalism, is the cure for what ails the world.

Why can’t the U.S. military pay with available funds for arming Ukraine and Israel? Instead billions will flow from our coffers to fund war as Republicans tirelessly work to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP. American children will go hungry while weapons manufacturers get rich.

When it comes to military weaponry, there’s no such thing as defensive weapons. Defensive bullets and bombs kill just like offensive ones do. Dead is dead.

If it is morally wrong to slaughter Jewish children, it is morally wrong to bomb, shoot, maim, and kill Palestinian children.

It’s disheartening to see Biden conflate the Ukraine War with the war between Israel and Palestine. And then throw in Iran to get an “axis of evil.”

Ron Klain, former Biden chief of staff, says there are a lot of weapons in the world. No shit, Sherlock. And who is the largest arms dealer in the world? The United States.

Bonus: Joe Biden might believe in a “two state solution,” but Israel doesn’t. It is the only solution, but seventy-five years later, we are no closer to a sovereign Palestine. In 1948, Britain gave Israel land that belonged to the Palestinians. Does anyone seriously think Israel will remove their illegal settlements from occupied Palestine, and allow the Palestinian people to chart their own future?

11 Comments

  1. Avatar
    TheDutchGuy

    Biden’s nonsense is more dangerous than Trump’s nonsense. Being less bizarre, Joe is more seductive than Trump’s wild hyperbole and incoherent lies. Joe has been a corporate servant his entire political career explaining why he favors NEW (AND BORROWED) money funneled to weapon makers rather than aid for Ukraine and Israel coming from the obscenely bloated Pentagon budget. Unlike countries we presume to hold accountable, the USA is above being held to account because might gives us the right to define what is terror and what is resistance.

    Since Nixon set the Dollar free to float, we’ve lived a fantasy of money created out of thin air. It’s a fiscal experiment. How long operating on borrowed money can be sustained is yet to be determined. If what goes up must indeed come down, then deficit spending must eventually obey the rule of gravity. Foreign aid and tax cuts are not paid for by tax payers. Taxes don’t even pay for current expenses. It’s borrowed money. Credit binges are fun and stimulating but they always run their course and then the piper must be paid.

  2. Avatar
    Troy

    Sad that all the news (and Bruce’s Hot 10) are all about the Israel-Hamas conflict. I think what many miss is that Iran’s fingerprints are all over this. Iran employs the adage from Zorro, “If you cannot clothe yourself in the skin of a lion, put on that of a fox!” As for Iran, seeking a nuclear bomb; it is amusing they use their theocratic constitution as a promise that they would never employ such a device. In reality they are much more likely to do so, their dirty hands supporting terrorists prove it. Far left liberals have been fed a line of bull about the innocent Palestinians. They elected Hamas leadership by 70% (and that was of course the last election), I also won’t forget that they danced for joy when the twin towers came down. That said, I don’t want to see civilian casualties, and I certainly wish Israel would stay out of the Hamas trap of an invasion. The world would be better off if they didn’t.

      • Avatar
        Troy

        Bruce, I wasn’t referring to you. Specifically there has been a vibe on the far left (before the Oct 7 attack) that has been ignorant/ignores that Hamas, the elected leaders of Gaza, are in fact terrorists and recognized as such.

  3. Avatar
    George

    It’s been said that if there IS a hereafter, only the non-religious, the heretics, the atheists, and unbelievers will end up in heaven, because they refused to go along with the program. The program that Christopher Hitchens described so well: “Born sick, and commanded to be well.”

  4. Avatar
    MJ Lisbeth

    The problem the US has always had in dealing with the rest of the world is that it has always operated from the Puritan-Fundamentalist mentality that there are two sides, and one of them is “God’s” side.

    The situation in Israel and Palestine is far more complicated and complex than that and, as Bruce and some commenters have pointed out, has its roots In colonialism. The American mentality is just another kind of colonialism, which will no more bring about peace than “carbon credits” will reverse climate change.

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