[Peace] [Peace-discuss] What we're up against

Sun Dec 17 07:38:00 UTC 2017

Please use the "peace" list properly. Some of us opted out of
"peace-discuss" because we don't want to be saturated -- so leave us out.
-- Bill

On Sun, Dec 17, 2017 at 1:03 AM, David Green via Peace <
peace at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

> Regarding one of the names mentioned at the bottom of the Baker interview:
> I recall a Masterpiece Theater series on Vera Brittain's A Testament of
> Youth (regarding World War I) in 1980; I have not seen the 2014 movie of
> the same name.
>
> From Wikipedia:
>
> She was a practical pacifist in the sense that she helped the war effort
> by working as a *fire warden*
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Defence_Service> and by travelling
> around the country raising funds for the *Peace Pledge Union*
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_Pledge_Union>'s food relief
> campaign. She was vilified for speaking out against *saturation bombing*
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_bombardment> of German cities through
> her 1944 booklet *Massacre by Bombing*. In 1945, the *Nazis'*
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Germany> *Black Book*
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book> of nearly 3,000 people to
> be immediately arrested in Britain after a *German invasion*
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea_Lion> was shown to include
> her name.*[5]* <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Brittain#cite_note-5>
>
> From the 1930s onwards, Brittain was a regular contributor to the pacifist
> magazine *Peace News <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_News>*. She
> eventually became a member of the magazine's editorial board and during the
> 1950s and 1960s was "writing articles against *apartheid*
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid> and *colonialism*
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonialism> and in favour of *nuclear
> disarmament* <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_disarmament>".*[6]*
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Brittain#cite_note-6>
>
> In November 1966, she suffered a fall in a badly lit London street en
> route to a speaking engagement. She attended the engagement, but afterwards
> found she had suffered a fractured left arm and broken little finger of her
> right hand. These injuries began a physical decline in which her mind
> became more confused and withdrawn.*[7]*
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Brittain#cite_note-7>
>
> Vera Brittain never fully got over the death in June 1918 of her beloved
> brother, Edward. She died in *Wimbledon*
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wimbledon,_London> on 29 March 1970, aged
> 76. Her will requested that her ashes be scattered on Edward's grave on the
> *Asiago* <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiago> Plateau in Italy –
> "...for nearly 50 years much of my heart has been in that Italian village
> cemetery"*[8]* <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Brittain#cite_note-8>—
> and her daughter honoured this request in September 1970.*[9]*
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Brittain#cite_note-9>
>
>
> On ‎Saturday‎, ‎December‎ ‎16‎, ‎2017‎ ‎07‎:‎53‎:‎47‎ ‎PM‎ ‎CST, C G
> Estabrook via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
>
>
> <wagingnonviolence.org>
> Why Nicholson Baker is a pacifist
>
> Anyone who makes even a modest habit of speaking out against war in
> public soon runs up against the inevitable, supposedly unanswerable
> question: What about World War II? (We have a whole category devoted to
> it.) It’s meant to be the ultimate stumper. This was the “good war,”
> wasn’t it, the war waged by the “greatest generation” against the
> evil incarnate of Hitler and imperial Japan? There was simply no other
> choice before the forces of goodness and truth but to leap into the
> single most deadly undertaking in all of human history. Right?
>
> That won’t work if you’re talking to Nicholson Baker. In an extraordinary
> cover story in this month’s issue of Harper’s Magazine, “Why I’m a
> Pacifist: The Dangerous Myth of the Good War,”  Baker explains how learning
> about World War II was actually a big part of what made him a pacifist in
> the first place. “In fact,” he writes,
>
> the more I learn about the war, the more I understand that the pacifists
> were the only ones, during a time of catastrophic violence, who repeatedly
> put forward proposals that had any chance of saving a threatened people.
> They weren’t naïve, they weren’t unrealistic—they were psychologically
> acute realists.
>
> His thinking began drifting this way during the Gulf War, and continued to
> evolve through the sequence of American military operations since. In the
> Balkans, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and in talk about bombing Iran, he
> noticed that World War II kept coming up. It kept being used to justify one
> war after another. Every new enemy only had to be painted as another Hitler
> to ensure public support.
>
> By 2008, Baker published Human Smoke, a book that collects documents,
> newspaper reports, and notable utterances during the lead-up to World War
> II, revealing how determined the Allied leaders were to fight at any cost.
> But, because of its form, we don’t get much of his own voice in that book.
> “Why I’m a Pacifist” is a chance to hear more directly from Baker himself
> about how he came to the conclusions that he did about the war.
>
> I was so thrilled with the essay that the moment I put it down I wanted
> more, so I wrote to Baker with some questions about what he’d said. Our
> exchange was as follows:
>
> WNV: Why did you decide to write Human Smoke the way you did, and why now
> write about World War II again as you do in Harper’s?
>
> NB: Human Smoke deals atomistically with the beginnings of the war because
> I thought that was a good way of conveying the confusion and sadness of
> what was going on. You have to pause and think moment by moment in order to
> feel the gradual disintegration of civil restraint. The book stopped at the
> end of 1941. The Harper’s piece mostly concentrates on events from 1942
> on, and it’s an effort to take up one big question: Were the pacifists
> right in calling for an immediate negotiated peace?
>
> WNV: Why do you say at the outset of the essay that you don’t expect most
> people to be persuaded? Is pacifism really such a lost cause?
>
> NB: No, pacifism isn’t a lost cause—in fact, most people, even generals
> and headbanging bar brawlers, act peaceably most of the time, or we’d
> get nothing done. “I’m not going to kill you” is basic to all
> cooperation. But during wars, pacifists are often in the minority and their
> arguments (so I’ve found!) make people really mad. Over time, these
> same people may and often do change their thinking, but it isn’t going to
> happen all at once. An inductive “nonviolent” approach to argumentation
> sometimes helps.
>
> WNV: What do you think American pacifists can do now, or should have done,
> to stop wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Libya?
>
> NB: American pacifists made heroic efforts to end those wars, using every
> channel available. They deserve our thanks. Afterward, when more people
> acknowledge that a military attack was a mistake, it helps to go back and
> see who really understood what was going on. I find it incredibly moving to
> see how right they were. Being able to stop a war isn’t the only reason for
> protesting a war. You may fail, but you still want to get it on record that
> there was an obvious better way as it was happening. The objection to any
> war has to be steady and constant, and one way of objecting is to
> re-examine historical touchstones. I wrote Human Smoke and “Why I’m
> a Pacifist” to recall, as others have, that the war resisters of World
> War II offered paths out of the horror at the time. Their steadiness
> and belief in reconciliation can help us now. We need new heroes. I’d
> rather think about Jessie Hughan, Abe Kaufman, Dorothy Day, Rabbi Cronbach,
> or Vera Brittain than Winston Churchill.
>
> WNV: What business does a novelist have to write on matters of war and
> peace anyway?
>
> NB: Tell that to Tolstoy.
>
> —.
>
> On Dec 16, 2017, at 6:32 PM, John W. <jbw292002 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, Dec 16, 2017 at 5:24 PM, C G Estabrook <cgestabrook at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Would this strike you as a reasonable defense of WWII in Europe?
>
> “…German war-making antedates Hitler, and Roosevelt, and indeed the birth
> of modern Germany. War-making is a permanent and immutable characteristic
> of human nature.  German imperialism is a bit more recent, but not much.
> It's a continuum.  And imperialism in general characterizes every
> militarily strong civilization since there were nation-states.  Even
> earlier, if you include the Roman Empire, Ghengis Khan, etc.”
>
> My question is not rhetorical. See Nicholson Baker, "Human Smoke: The
> Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization” (2008).
>
> —CGE
>
>
> There's rarely a defense for war, and never for imperialism.  But German
> imperialism and the notion that Germans were somehow a superior "race"
> certainly predated Hitler.  He didn't invent it; he merely carried it a
> step further.
>
> What has been much more surprising is how Germany has reinvented itself in
> such a progressive way since World War II.  But don't hold your breath.
> Neo-Nazism lurks just barely beneath the surface in Germany, just as it
> does in America.  The pendulum will swing again, and man's brute nature
> will reassert itself.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Dec 16, 2017, at 5:08 PM, John W. via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.
> net <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>> wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, Dec 16, 2017 at 4:02 PM, C G Estabrook <cgestabrook at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> How should the good fight go on? Does Hedges tell us? It’s clear that
> deploring Trump’s character  is not the way.
>
> The US political establishment - who have provided us with 40 years of war
> and accelerating inequality, in both Republican and Democrat
> administrations - are using Trump (the weakest president since Coolidge) as
> a boogeyman to insure the maintenance of those policies.
>
> He was elected in part because of his occasional criticism of them, and
> that was enough to terrify the neocons.
>
> Johnstone, although perhaps not writing in a Ciceronian style, points that
> out clearly.
>
> Anti-Trumpism is being used "as a deliberate ploy to manipulate what
> remains of the American political left into the pro-neoliberalism, pro-war
> ‘center’ …  the Democratic party is able to herd the political left into
> supporting pro-war, pro-oligarchy candidates and agendas…"
>
> That’s what must be exposed, and opposed. Trump is not the problem: US
> war-making is. —CGE
>
>
>
> Except that U.S. war-making antedates tRump, and Coolidge, and indeed the
> birth of the Republic.  :-/  War-making is a permanent and immutable
> characteristic of human nature.  U.S. imperialism is a bit more recent, but
> not much.  It's a continuum.  And imperialism in general characterizes
> every militarily strong civilization since there were nation-states.  Even
> earlier, if you include the Roman Empire, Ghengis Khan, etc.
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Dec 16, 2017, at 2:20 PM, Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.
> net <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>> wrote:
> >
> > Upon reading this, carefully, I find it overwrought, hyperbolic, to the
> point of being deceptive. Not that I have any wish to defend the policies
> rendered by the Dems and friends on matters of war and peace, and more
> generally the effects of the U.S.(struggles for world hegemony) upon the
> rest of the world. It is all frighteningly abysmal. But the good fight must
> go on, as Cris Hedges emphasized at the end of his remarkable, if overlong,
> address to a Sanctuary audience. .
> >
> > —mkb
> >
> >> On Dec 16, 2017, at 11:38 AM, C G Estabrook <cgestabrook at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> Anti-Trumpism Is Anti-Progressivism In Disguise
> >>
> >> The usual Clintonite pundits are crowing triumphantly about their
> narrow, expensive victory over a spectacularly awful candidate in Alabama
> yesterday, effectively claiming that this vindicates the way they’ve been
> ignoring everyone to the left of John McCain since the election. I don’t
> care about the Democratic party enough to write an entire article about how
> this is yet another sign that its leadership has no intention of ever
> moving even a single inch to the left in any way that matters, but I’d like
> to share a few thoughts on the general big-picture trend in US politics
> that this is a part of.
> >>
> >> When I say that anti-Trumpism is anti-progressivism in disguise, I
> don’t mean to suggest that Trump is progressive in any way, shape or form,
> nor do I mean to suggest that his administration isn’t advancing many
> legitimately toxic policies which must be ferociously opposed. By
> anti-Trumpism I mean the blinkered, frenzied “ZOMG LITERALLY HITLER” cult
> which prioritizes impeachment of the sitting president above all else and
> at any cost, and by anti-progressivism I mean it’s being used as a
> deliberate ploy to manipulate what remains of the American political left
> into the pro-neoliberalism, pro-war “center”.
> >>
> >> The campaign against Roy Moore was simply a microcosm of this general
> “vote for us because we’re not that scary boogieman” good cop/bad cop game
> both parties have been extorting the American public with for generations.
> Like Trump, Moore was a scandal-saturated slob who represented some of the
> most pernicious aspects of the GOP, and, though his opponent Doug Jones
> campaigned as a centrist who would work with Republicans, he was still
> viewed as better than Moore by enough people to win an election. This
> extortion scheme forced the people of Alabama to choose between a senator
> who would help move US politics far to the right and someone who would help
> move US politics only somewhat to the right, and they voted in
> self-defense, not because they liked Jones but because they feared Moore.
> >>
> >> This is a perfect illustration of how anti-Trumpism is being used on a
> much larger scale. By constantly masturbating the absurd narrative that
> Donald Trump is simultaneously (A) crazy, (B) stupid, (C) a secret Nazi and
> (D) a treasonous Kremlin agent, the Democratic party is able to herd the
> political left into supporting pro-war, pro-oligarchy candidates and
> agendas. In the same way they used “But Roy Moore!” to win support for an
> imperialist corporate whore, they will use “But Trump!” to win support for
> their neoliberal neoconservative extortion scheme at every turn.
> >>
> >> Whenever I point this out I get a bunch of Democratic party loyalists
> telling me “We can walk and chew gum at the same time! We can work to
> impeach Trump while advancing progressive causes!” No you can’t. You can’t
> and you don’t. When it came time to fight the DNC’s illicit,
> charter-violating installation of Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders they
> “But Trump!”ed you into conforming. When it came time to support a third
> party they “But Trump!”ed you into conforming. When it came time to demand
> a massive overhaul of the DNC they “But Trump!”ed you into conforming. When
> it came time to demand a full investigation and restitution for the
> Democratic party’s misdeeds and manipulations exposed by WikiLeaks they
> “But Trump!”ed you into conforming. Every meaningful movement toward
> economic justice has been muted and marginalized since the election by “But
> Trump! But Trump! But Trump!” while the Republicans march the country
> further into corporatist oligarchy, and this scheme will continue for as
> long as it continues to work.
> >>
> >> As long as the American left allows fear of Trump to determine the way
> it thinks and votes, the American left will be completely neutered. When
> this boogieman is out of office, they’ll simply elevate another one just
> like they did with Trump, probably one that’s even scarier since the last
> one was so effective. If they can’t beat that one they’ll use him to herd
> the left into the center, just like they’re doing now.
> >>
> >> There’s a pipe dream in the DemEnter school of thought that
> progressives will be able to stage a takeover of the Democratic party
> beginning in 2018, but as long as the cult of anti-Trumpism, impeachment
> and Russiagate continues to dominate the way Democrats think and vote, this
> simply will not happen. 2018 will not be a year in which Berniecrats shore
> up influence over the Democratic party, it will be a year in which
> Democrats are “But Trump!”ed into supporting the so-called “center”, which
> only gets to call itself that because its massive corporate funds and media
> influence have enabled it to become a mainstream force.
> >>
> >> You cannot have your impeachment/Russiagate crusade and also move US
> politics to the left, progressives. You cannot. What you are trying to do
> isn’t like walking and chewing gum at the same time, it’s like trying to
> walk in one direction while taking a jet plane in the other direction at
> the same time. Keep supporting the impeachment/Russiagate narrative and
> you’re just handing the ranchers an easy day’s work as you march yourselves
> all straight into the slaughterhouse. They will “But Trump!” you into
> conformity until you stop letting fear and corporate narratives rule your
> minds and start pushing for what you truly want for yourselves instead.
> >>
> >> --– Caitlin Johnstone <medium.com>
>
>
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*My name is a complete sentence*
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