"All options are on the table" (Read nuke, annihilate, 'Bomb you into the Stone Age'...anything but diplomacy) is another cringeworthy euphemism we'll be overexposed to all year. And don't forget about all those pressing family discussions "around the kitchen table"...you know, about rent, gas prices, nukes, whatever. It'll be a big year for make-believe tables.  

 

 

John,

Why do you suppose there is no antiwar resistance? Until the vast partisan divide that has existed since the Obama years is narrowed and your "Liberals, Ds, Rs, and MAGAs (whoever they are now)," start resisting the national pro-war, neoliberal agenda together, demanding real change, the U.S. will continue to accelerate in its downward spiral of imperial collapse.

These biannual No Kings festivities have been for the most part enormous Trump rant-fests, promoted and funded by oligarchs like George Soros and the Walton family. Do you think if Netanyahu apologists like 'I am a Zionist' Biden or AIPAC Kamala were occupying the White House waging war on Iran, providing more arms for Israel or Ukraine, arresting, deporting or detaining pro-Palestinian protestors, expanding mass surveillance on U.S. citizens and more that Open Society or 50501 would sponsor or promote one more No Kings pep rally?

That's what I thought.

Don't get me wrong. I support enormous street demonstrations and hope the turnout in Bellingham is huge. Solidarity can be invigorating. I have participated in my share - on my own dime - for decades. As a member of Military Families Speak Out and Veterans For Peace I demanded an end to the bloodshed in Iraq and elsewhere, with hundreds of thousand of others, with not a single oligarch sponsoring our efforts or a politician - aside from Dennis Kucinich, of course - acknowledging our existence. I would estimate, though, that most of the demonstrators knew why they were there, unlike most No Kings participants I tried to engage in conversations between harangues. The rest learned a few things they never they would have never been exposed to on CNN or MSNBC (now MS Now) or reading NYT; including valuable antiwar strategies to share and motivate others when they got home.

We're all angry, John, devastated emotionally. During the Bush/Cheney years, with a son in Iraq, I was livid. My hate meter was pegged for W and Rumsfeld, no less than for Neo-Caligula and Dumb McNamara. But hate is not a strategy, and a rant is not a weapon for change.

It might be a good time for No Kings and Indivisible organizers to marshal their partisan resources for a genuine, sustained antiwar resistance before US troops are forced to assault another impenetrable kill zone in another war of choice. It's probably too late to fend off their ingress, and a quagmire is likely without demanding an end to war, but Democratic pep rallies every six months are not going to "spark fear within the oligarchy," according to Dorothy Lennon. 

Lennon adds: "There are no serious demands from the festivities this weekend. The oligarchs will concede nothing this weekend. It will fall to us to build something with serious demands that will force the oligarchs to concede something."

Let's start with demanding an end to the war on Iran, and an off-ramp for WWIII. Or is that an overreach for No Kings.