The housing affordability crisis – and how to solve it – has become a major focus during election season, for good reason. Millions of American families struggle to afford and keep a roof over their heads, find themselves unsheltered, or have become frustrated in the hope of owning their own home.

The over-focus on expanding housing supply through for-profit development misses a key contributor to the housing crisis: the concentration of wealth and power. The challenges of the U.S. housing crisis go beyond supply or fixing local land use regulations. The billionaire class and billionaire-backed private equity investors have become a driving force in the U.S. housing crisis.

A new report, Billionaire Blowback on Housing: How concentrated wealth disrupts housing markets and worsens the housing affordability crisis, coauthored by the Institute for Policy Studies and Popular Democracy, examines the myriad ways that billionaire investors are harming local housing markets and diminishing the supply of affordable housing.

With roughly 800 billionaires in the U.S. with combined wealth of $6.2 trillion (and 2,781 billionaires globally with over $14.2 trillion), ultra-wealthy investors tend to diversify their holdings across multiple kinds of assets. A huge amount of this billionaire wealth is invested in property, land, and housing. Billions and possibly trillions of dollars are sucked into predatory investment practices and luxury housing schemes — where global billionaire investors park vast quantities of wealth in U.S markets.

This is not your grandparent’s gentrification, but rather a hyper-gentrification fueled by concentrated wealth driving up land and housing costs, expanding short-term rentals, and treating housing like a commodity to speculate on or a place to park wealth. The billionaires are displacing the millionaires, and the millionaires are disrupting the housing market for everyone else.

Estimates of hidden wealth are as high as $36 trillion globally, with billions parked in U.S. land and housing markets.

Our report found that billionaire-backed private equity firms have wormed their way into different segments of the housing market to extract ever-increasing rents and value from multi-family rental, single-family homes, and mobile home park communities. For instance, Blackstone has become the largest corporate landlord in the world, with a vast and diversified real estate portfolio. It owns more than 300,000 residential units across the U.S., has $1 trillion in global assets, and nearly doubled its profits in 2021.

Global billionaires have purchased billions in U.S. real estate to diversify their asset holdings, driving the creation of luxury housing that functions as “safety deposit boxes in the sky.” Estimates of hidden wealth are as high as $36 trillion globally, with billions parked in U.S. land and housing markets.

Wealthy investors are acquiring property and holding units vacant, so that in many communities the number of vacant units greatly exceeds the number of unhoused people. Nationwide there are 16 million vacant homes: that is, 28 vacant homes for every unhoused person. These investors are also buying up a large segment of the short-term rental market, preventing local residents from living in these homes, in order to cash in on tourism. These are not small owners with one unit, but corporate owners with multiple properties.

The focus on expanding housing supply by giving incentives to for-profit development has failed to add to the stock of permanently affordable housing. For five decades, U.S. taxpayers have subsidized private for-profit investors and developers to build tens of thousands of temporarily affordable units of housing. Federal programs give for-profit investors wasteful tax breaks, but only require the units to remain affordable for 30 years or less, so many have been converted to market-rate housing.

Policy makers should expand the social housing sector of community-controlled or publicly owned housing that is outside the speculative market, such as quality public housing and other forms of nonprofit-owned housing like community land trusts or resident cooperatives. New investment in social housing should come from taxing billionaires, levying mansion taxes, and regulating harmful practices.

Instead of waiting for action from the federal government, local communities can protect residents in existing affordable housing and generate revenue for affordable housing.

Policymakers should require ownership transparency, so community members know who is buying up neighborhoods. They should institute limitations on corporate ownership of housing and pass ordinances giving tenants the right to “first option to buy” apartments and mobile home parks when they come up for sale; and public funding as well as support structures to make these buy-outs possible.

Levying taxes on luxury real estate transactions (known as “mansion taxes”), on speculation, on vacancy, and on the rich, can generate funds that should be dedicated to expanding the supply of nonprofit and social housing.

At least one tactic in this year’s election subversion playbook is clear. Step one: before Election Day, file a slew of lawsuits making baseless allegations of bloated voter rolls, unlawful voting, and problematic election procedures. Step two: if right-wing activists are unhappy with election results, point to those previously filed cases to justify demands to halt certification or change outcomes. This plan is neither secret nor new. It’s a repeat of 2020, now with more advanced planning. And just like in 2020, the plan should fail.

Conservative activists, operatives, and election denial groups have filed dozens of cases. With a particular intensity in swing states, they are suing to give local election board members the right to refuse to certify election results, exclude mail ballots that arrive after Election Day from the count, limit voting by overseas and military voters, restrict the availability of ballot drop boxes, force states and counties to aggressively purge their voter rolls, and limit when absentee ballots can be requested, submitted, and counted. While the legal claims and unsubstantiated allegations differ somewhat from case to case, they share a common goal: cast enough doubt on American elections to excuse subsequent efforts (whether in court or otherwise) to supersede the will of voters.

For Americans primed to believe that voter fraud is rampant and the 2020 election was stolen, partisans who are unhappy with the 2024 results will use the ongoing legal processes in their effort to undermine public confidence and confirm a sense that our democracy is “rigged.”

These cases are — to use a technical, legal term — bogus. We know this for several reasons. First, plaintiffs’ factual allegations are based on conspiracy theories, misinformation, unsubstantiated data, and claims of widespread voter fraud that have repeatedly been disproven. For example, over a dozen cases are premised at least in part on unsubstantiated fears of noncitizen voting. Yet the evidence could not be clearer: with vanishingly rare exceptions, only eligible citizens vote, and states have multiple systems in place to ensure that remains the case. Dressing up misinformation and conspiracy theories in legal jargon and laundering them through court filings doesn’t make the allegations true.

Second, plaintiffs don’t even seem to be trying to win in court. In many of these right-wing activist cases, plaintiffs have not even bothered to file motions to ask the courts to fix the so-called problems before Election Day. If plaintiffs genuinely believed there were issues with our voting systems and had any evidence to back up such beliefs, they would have requested that courts remedy those problems immediately (by seeking a preliminary injunction, for example). A representative from United Sovereign Americans, a right-wing group that has filed at least nine cases challenging various election procedures, conceded that its goal is to “pre-position standing” for the post–Election Day period. Of course, preemptively filing a lawsuit does not confer standing, which requires actual harm, among other things.

Other cases are mere copycats of losing efforts from years past. For example, one Michigan case seeking more aggressive voter purging effectively replicates three similar cases filed in Michigan in the last five years, all of which plaintiffs voluntarily settled or lost. A federal court dismissed the case today.

Third, even if the legal theories that plaintiffs offer were supported by facts (which they aren’t), they would not warrant the extreme remedies that plaintiffs ultimately seek or that they may request after Election Day: stopping the certification of and overturning election results. In more than 20 cases, for example, plaintiffs allege that states have not done enough to remove ineligible voters from their rolls. The remedy for such a claim is for the state to conduct reasonable voter list maintenance at least 90 days before an election, not to throw away the votes of millions of eligible voters afterward. What’s more, certification is not discretionary — state law has long established that officials have a mandatory duty to certify elections. It’s no surprise, then, that courts have already tossed several of these cases, including in Arizona, Georgia, Maryland, Nevada, and Pennsylvania.

We anticipate that courts will largely reject the unsubstantiated claims in these pre-election cases, just as they did overwhelmingly in 2020.

But winning in court isn’t necessarily the point. We expect that activists will point to the mere existence of ongoing litigation as a basis for slowing, stopping, or altering election processes. Their audience is not just the court of law but the court of public opinion. For Americans primed to believe that voter fraud is rampant and the 2020 election was stolen, partisans who are unhappy with the 2024 results will use the ongoing legal processes in their effort to undermine public confidence and confirm a sense that our democracy is “rigged.”

We’ve been here before, and now we know what to expect. The American public, the press, and courts should not be duped into believing that where there’s smoke, there’s fire — because these cases are nothing but smoke and mirrors.

As we head into fall, now is the perfect time for families to plan their next escape from the stresses of school, work, and everyday life—and there’s no better place to go than the outdoors. From Acadia to Everglades to Yosemite, our national parks provide opportunities for relaxation, camping, day hikes, and science education.

We are two people who understand—and love—the outdoors. I, Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.), am a single mom of three kids and an avid national park visitor, and serve on the House Natural Resources Committee, which oversees federal land and our environment. And I, Tigran Nahabedian, am a student and youth adviser at Outdoors Alliance for Kids. We’re both passionate about exploring our national treasures and making it easier for all Americans to experience our country’s beautiful parks and lands.

Some families might be daunted at the idea of visiting our national parks. For some, the cost of entry and other assorted expenses can feel prohibitive. Fortunately, the Every Kid Outdoors program helps remove one of those barriers by granting fourth graders and their families an annual pass that allows them free entry to all federal public lands, waters, and shores. Dedicated park staff, both in person and online, can help families plan a fun, safe trip, appropriate for every level of outdoor experience, fitness, and budget.

If you love visiting our national treasures and agree that everyone should have the ability to enjoy the outdoors, make your voice heard.

Every year, over 200,000 kids and their families get a pass, helping connect them with nature and history. These affordable vacation and recreation opportunities help kids learn about conservation and wildlife, and teach important lessons about our nation’s history, geology, biology, and more. The Every Kid Outdoors program sparks passions that can shape future careers in science or recreation and creates lifelong memories.

But, if Congress doesn’t act to extend and fund the program, it will expire in 2026, leaving families to pay the full cost of admission to our public lands. Respectively, in our roles as parent and congressmember, and as a student and an outdoor advocate, we have seen the benefits of this program firsthand, which is why we are working to build bipartisan support for the Every Kid Outdoors Act. This bill would make permanent the free admission for fourth graders and their families, and expand the program to fifth graders.

Getting families on our federal lands goes beyond the direct benefits of helping kids learn and grow. Our national parks, forests, and marine sanctuaries are cornerstones of our economy, infrastructure, and communities. That diner serving bananas foster pancakes half an hour from the campsite or that roadside shop stocking magnets and bug spray rely on thriving national parks that attract millions of visitors each year. A National Park Service report in 2023 found that over 325 million visitors spent $26.4 billion in communities within 60 miles of a national park. Outdoor recreation alone accounted for $560 billion of the United States’ 2022 GDP.

So, if you love visiting our national treasures and agree that everyone should have the ability to enjoy the outdoors, make your voice heard. Be loud and be proud about your support for the Every Kids Outdoors program and the Every Kid Outdoors Act so that generations of families can continue to make memories in our national parks. Talk about the program with your friends, family, and neighbors—and if you know a fourth grader, tell them to get an Every Kid Outdoors pass. It’s the perfect time to visit a park.

Hurricanes Helene and Milton have once again brought climate change to the attention of many voters. With so much dialogue regarding hurricane response directed toward the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the president, it is important to remember that local governments play a vital role in climate change initiatives.

Local governments are significant actors in climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts through city policy, zoning decisions, funding distributions, and the enforcement of emissions laws. As New York City grapples with the indictment of Mayor Eric Adams and a fast-approaching mayoral election, residents should look south for motivation.

NYC needs a mayor that is a champion for the climate justice movement to curb emissions, increase local resilience, and build adaptive capacity to help avoid the catastrophic scenarios witnessed this month from Florida to North Carolina.

Reign of Error

Following the “reign,” as he recently put it, of Mayor Eric Adams, the city’s emissions projections remain bleak. In 2022, according to the emissions inventories provided by the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice, New York City released 53.7 million tons of carbon-dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere, a 17% decrease from the city’s 2005 benchmark. This is markedly short of the city’s goal to reduce emissions by 40% (from the benchmark) by 2030 and clearly not on track for the goal to achieve an 80% reduction by 2050.

According to the “One City, Built to Last” report released in 2014 under Mayor Bill de Blassio, two-thirds of these emissions reductions will need to come from building efficiency. A goal of 35% building emissions reduction by 2025 was set under this plan. Now, just two months from 2025, the reduction of buildings emissions is just 22%. Law 97, an attempt to decrease building emissions by 40% by 2030, has proven to be largely ineffective. The penalty set in place by the law is much too low for the world’s top financial and real estate companies at just $268 dollars per ton of carbon over the limit. Also, with only 30 staff members dedicated to enforcing the law, the estimated 3,700 buildings that are not complying with the law may never be held accountable. Additionally, Mayor Adams has created another loophole for these non-compliers, Renewable Energy Credits that will allow the owners of these buildings to buy credits to offset their emissions while maintaining their dangerous emissions levels.

Transportation, the second largest emitting sector in the city, has decreased only 3% from the 2005 benchmark. The vast majority of transportation emissions comes from on-road vehicles, 58% of which are privately owned according to a recent New York Times report. A policy passed by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to decrease the number of vehicles in the city, Congestion Pricing, was shot down by Gov. Kathy Hochul before it even took effect. The response from Mayor Adams? He undermined the policy by agreeing with the governor’s decision. NYC was set to be the first city in the country to introduce congestion pricing, which may have served as a model and had a lasting impact on the future of green cities in the U.S..

A City in Peril

As Eric Adams continues to pander to the financiers of the fossil fuel industry, (who helped fund his campaign) and ultra-wealthy real estate owners, climate change projections for the city are becoming increasingly frightening. The New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC) 2022 report on climate risks states that sea level rise (SLR), flooding, and heatwaves will be among the most threatening climate change impacts for the city.

SLR estimates are dependent on global trends in emissions and associated warming so are difficult to predict on a local level. At the low end of the NPCC estimates, SLR is expected to reach 12 inches by 2050 and, at the high end, 23 inches. By the end of the century, SLR will be between 25 and 65inches, making many low-lying areas like Brighton Beach, Rockaway Beach, and Midland Beach uninhabitable, and leaving areas across NYC extremely vulnerable to flooding. Increasingly intense and unpredictable tropical storms and cyclones will make Superstorm Sandy level events more frequent, consequently threatening lives and depleting disaster recovery funding.

Heatwaves are expected to increase in frequency and intensity, which could be detrimental for New Yorkers living and working in an already deadly heat island that claims 350 lives per year. Extreme heat events are increasing at a rate of 0.47 days per decade in Central Park and about one day per decade at LaGuardia. Heatwaves and increasing temperatures will affect low-income communities disproportionately where the heat island effect is greatest due to a lack of tree coverage and green spaces.

The Case for a Climate Justice Mayor

Let us use Eric Adams’ indictment as a moment to not only address the city’s corruption but to turn the page from a local government complacent with climate inaction to one that is invested in climate justice. We need a mayor that does not have deep ties with the funders of global warming but one that has deep ties in community organizing. We need a mayor that understands the dire consequences climate change will have on the city, from the economy to people’s livelihoods. We need a mayor that can help transform the city into a living example of a sustainable and equitable city. We need a mayor that cares about the future.

Of course, a mayor alone cannot not fix the plethora of climate change related issues the city is facing. But here is what a climate and community focused mayor could do for the city.

1. Use New York City’s political and economic power to challenge Gov. Hochul when she makes irresponsible decisions, like shooting down Congestion Pricing and refusing to sign the Climate Change Superfund Act.
2. Enforce existing buildings emissions caps and propose stricter emissions laws.
3. Advocate for zoning laws that will promote renewable energy production.
4. Create building codes that require greater energy efficiency while simultaneously ensuring infrastructural resilience to climate change impacts.
5. Increase the pace of electrifying the city’s fleets and adding solar to all public buildings.
6. Work directly with low-income communities to increase their climate resilience while protecting the areas from climate gentrification.
7. Work directly with young activists and students who will be affected by climate change for their entire lives.
8. Stop cop city, as it is part of a carceral system that disproportionately affects Black and brown communities, leading to inequity and increased vulnerability.
9. Divert funding from the police system to climate change initiatives, homelessness services, and community organizations.
10. Fix the city’s corruption.

As we saw this month in the South, entire cities’ futures rest on our ability to mitigate climate change and adapt to its powerful impacts. A climate justice mayor will lower the city’s emissions and increase the city’s resilience and adaptive capacity by focusing on improving social services; ending the city’s corruption; and working directly with civic groups, young people, and low-income communities. New Yorkers and the media must make climate justice the forefront of campaign issues as the mayoral election heats up.

Sunrise Movement NYC is a youth movement pushing to replace Eric Adams with a mayor who takes bold action to make environmental, economic, and racial justice the NYC standard. Follow the Sunrise Movement NYC Hub or @sunrisemvmtnyc on instagram to get involved and learn more about the future we are fighting for.

Picture a weapon that can level a city block, manufactured in Belgium, assembled in Dubai, financed through Swiss banks, and delivered to militants by a “logistics company” registered in Singapore. This isn’t the plot of a thriller—it’s how modern warfare works.

When a sophisticated drone strike hit Saudi oil facilities in 2019, investigators traced the weapons technology not to a nation-state, but to a complex network of corporate suppliers and militant groups.

When corporations can effectively arm and support militant groups with impunity, concepts like state sovereignty and international law begin to break down.

Welcome to the new face of global conflict, where the most dangerous relationships aren’t between countries, but between corporations and armed groups. These shadowy alliances are reshaping how wars are fought, who profits from them, and why traditional peacekeeping doesn’t work anymore.

The New War Profiteers

The old image of arms dealers as shady men with briefcases full of cash is hopelessly outdated. Today’s weapons trade runs through legitimate-looking corporations, tech companies, and financial institutions that have mastered the art of working in war’s gray zones.

Take the ongoing conflict in Yemen. While media attention focuses on state actors, private military contractors and defense corporations have formed intricate relationships with local militant groups. These companies don’t just supply weapons. They provide training, maintenance, and even operational support, all while maintaining a veneer of legitimate business operations.

“What we’re seeing is the corporatization of conflict,” explains Sarah Martinez, a specialist in non-state armed groups at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “These aren’t simple arms deals anymore—they’re long-term business relationships that create sustained cycles of violence.”

Follow the Money (If You Can)

The financial web supporting these alliances is deliberately opaque and designed to evade accountability. Private military companies, often registered in offshore jurisdictions like Dubai or Singapore, form partnerships with shell corporations based in the Caribbean. These shell entities, in turn, subcontract their operations to ambiguous “logistics companies” operating out of Eastern Europe. This elaborate system of front companies and subcontractors allows weapons and military equipment to flow freely into conflict zones without raising red flags. Responsibility is diffused across a web of corporate structures, making it nearly impossible to trace the ultimate source of arms shipments or hold anyone accountable for fueling conflicts.

In Africa’s resource-rich regions, the situation is becoming even more alarming. Here, private security firms, often funded by Western investors, forge alliances with local militant groups under the pretext of protecting valuable oil and mineral installations. What starts as a “security” operation to safeguard resources often escalates into these firms operating as de facto private armies, controlling entire regions and undermining the authority of national governments. These alliances not only destabilize local politics but also complicate international peacekeeping efforts, creating power vacuums where non-state actors can thrive. In such an environment, financial backing for these operations becomes a critical tool, turning what appears to be routine corporate transactions into a driving force behind some of the world’s most enduring conflicts.

The Tech Factor Changes Everything

Modern conflict isn’t just about guns and bombs. Today’s militant groups need sophisticated technology, which they’re getting from seemingly legitimate sources. Communications equipment, surveillance technology, and cyber tools flow through corporate channels that straddle the line between legal and illegal. These tools allow groups to operate covertly, communicate securely, and execute sophisticated cyber-attacks, which can be as damaging as conventional warfare. For instance, militant groups are using encrypted communication tools to evade state surveillance, while also acquiring drones and other high-tech surveillance equipment through corporate gray markets.

This access to advanced technology extends beyond just weaponry. It’s also about operational capacity. “The real game-changer isn’t the weapons themselves, but the support systems,” notes James Wilson, a former United Nations weapons inspector. When militant groups can access corporate-level logistics, training, and technical support, they become far more dangerous than traditional armed forces. These corporate partnerships allow militant organizations to mimic the structure of formal military forces, combining guerrilla tactics with modern technology to disrupt state control, launch cyberattacks, and even hold territories with a level of sophistication unseen in previous decades

A Pattern Emerges

The pattern repeats across regions. In Syria, corporate entities linked to Russian military industries provide not just weapons but entire support ecosystems to various armed groups. These companies deliver everything from logistical support and advanced weaponry to financial aid, creating a symbiotic relationship with local militias. This dynamic allows both the corporations and the armed groups to thrive in a perpetual state of conflict.

There is a growing call for the development of new international legal frameworks that hold corporations accountable for their roles in conflicts, particularly when they profit from or directly contribute to violence.

Similarly, in the Horn of Africa, Chinese companies, while officially involved in building infrastructure projects, are simultaneously supplying militant groups with equipment and technical expertise under the radar. These companies are benefiting financially from both sides—securing government contracts for infrastructure while also arming insurgents. According to the U.N. Security Council, these arrangements contribute to what conflict researchers call “sustained instability zones”—regions where violence is deliberately prolonged because it becomes profitable for both corporate actors and armed groups.

As a result, traditional peacekeeping missions, which were designed to manage conflict between state actors, are increasingly ineffective. These missions are often incapable of addressing the complex web of corporate and non-state alliances that fuel these conflicts. As the International Peace Institute highlights, peacekeepers find themselves irrelevant in these new conflict ecosystems, where the drivers of violence are no longer solely state actors but profit-driven corporations and armed factions operating outside the bounds of state control.

Why Traditional Solutions Don’t Work Anymore

U.N. peacekeeping was designed for a world where states were the primary actors in conflicts. But what happens when the real power lies with corporate-militant alliances that operate across borders? Traditional diplomatic tools and peace agreements often miss the real drivers of conflict.

“Peacekeepers can monitor cease-fires between armies, but they can’t address corporate supply chains that fuel conflicts,” explains former U.N. peacekeeper Colonel Maria Rodriguez. “We’re using 20th-century tools to fight 21st-century wars.”

These alliances don’t just threaten local stability. They’re undermining the entire international system. When corporations can effectively arm and support militant groups with impunity, concepts like state sovereignty and international law begin to break down.

The numbers are staggering. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, corporate-militant alliances now influence conflicts affecting over 250 million people globally. These arrangements have created shadow economies worth an estimated $300 billion annually.

What Can Be Done?

Traditional sanctions and arms embargo often fail because they target state actors rather than the increasingly influential corporate-militant networks that drive modern conflicts. Some experts argue for a completely new approach to international conflict management. First, they suggest recognizing that these corporate-militant alliances, rather than state actions, are the primary forces behind many of today’s wars. Without this shift in focus, sanctions will continue to miss their mark.

Second, there is a growing call for the development of new international legal frameworks that hold corporations accountable for their roles in conflicts, particularly when they profit from or directly contribute to violence. This would address the legal gaps that allow companies to evade responsibility when operating in conflict zones.

Finally, experts propose peacekeeping operations that disrupt these corporate-militant alliances instead of merely focus on separating armed forces. By cutting off the financial and logistical support that such networks provide to militant groups, peacekeeping efforts could become more effective in curbing conflict.

The real question is whether the international community can adapt fast enough to address this new reality, and whether global institutions are equipped to deal with conflicts that no longer fit neatly within the old rules of engagement.

The future of global conflict isn’t just about nation-states anymore. It’s about complex alliances between corporations and armed groups that profit from sustained instability. As one U.N. official put it (speaking on condition of anonymity): “We’re still playing checkers while they’re playing a much more dangerous game.” This sentiment underscores the growing complexity of global conflict, where traditional methods of diplomacy and peacekeeping are falling behind the rapidly evolving alliances between non-state actors.

The question isn’t whether these alliances will reshape global conflict. They already have, as seen in regions from the Middle East to Latin America. The involvement of multinational corporations in resource-driven conflicts, alongside insurgent and militant groups, adds layers of complexity that traditional state-based frameworks struggle to address. These alliances transcend borders, ideologies, and legal frameworks, creating new kinds of power dynamics that the international system was not designed to manage.

The real question is whether the international community can adapt fast enough to address this new reality, and whether global institutions are equipped to deal with conflicts that no longer fit neatly within the old rules of engagement. This crisis requires not only new thinking about conflict resolution, peace enforcement, and international law, but also a reevaluation of how power is distributed in a globalized world where non-state actors hold increasing sway. Until then, corporate-militant alliances will continue to challenge not just regional stability but the very foundation of the international order, undermining the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and governance that have long underpinned global relations.

We are two-odd weeks out from a presidential election with one of the contenders the most wildly unqualified candidate in American history and it couldn’t be closer. How can this be?

The fact that it can even be close at all tells us there is a massive failure on the part of the status quo, the “system,” the ruling class—call it whatever you want—such that half of the electorate would rather burn it down than give it any more time to fix itself.

That fact alone—the intractability of the MAGA movement's rage and its possession of half of the electorate—tells us that the country is going to be impossible to govern, no matter who wins.

If Harris wins, we will at best have a simmering, low-intensity Civil War for at least the next four years. If Trump wins, it won’t matter because the country we thought we lived in won’t exist any more.

Here’s a quick, admittedly only cursory, snapshot of who Donald Trump is:

• He’s a 34-time convicted felon.
• He’s an adjudicated rapist.
• He a failed insurrectionist who tried to overthrow the government.
• He’s a convicted tax fraud.
• He’s a six-time bankrupt business failure masquerading as a business tycoon.
• He’s indicted for 50+ other crimes, trials awaiting.
• He’s a twice divorced, swaggering adulterer.
• He’s a pathological liar.
• He’s called those who serve their country “suckers and losers.”
• He continues to rant about immigrants eating people’s cats and dogs.
• He claims Democrats sanction the murder of newly-born babies.
• He says schools are changing the sex of children while they’re at school.
• His jock talk marvels at the size of Arnold Palmer’s Five Iron.
• He says he’s coming after “the enemy within,” meaning you.
• He says his own Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should be executed.
• He says we need to terminate the Constitution.
• His Chief of Staff, two Defense Secretaries, National Security Adviser, and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs—those who know him best and are closest to the levers of the highest power—all say he is unfit for the office of the presidency and a danger to the country.

Again, this is only a drive-by chronicling of Trump’s more obvious, odious infirmities and disqualifications for office. There was a time when any one of these would have disqualified a candidate from even being considered by his party.

Yet, Trump is fervently and religiously embraced by, what, maybe 70 million adults? And, it’s not at all clear that he won’t be the next president.

What does this tell us?

First, it tells us that there is a knock-down, drag-out fight between the Olympians and the Titans of our Reigning Oligarchy. The Trump wing of the Oligarchy is what we can call the “Burn it Down” branch. Its brain is Steve Bannon, seconded by Elon Musk.

In that world, chaos follows Trump’s ascension and it’s all turned over to the lesser oligarchs to rearrange the bouncing rubble in whatever fashion they see fit.

Social Security is privatized, handed over to the tender ministrations of Wall Street. Medicare, too, with trillions of dollars of “savings” creamed off to the Oligarchs. Most federal regulations are abolished, including those that protect workplace safety, the food supply, airline safety, the air and water, the integrity of the financial system, and people’s privacy from abuse by their digital overlords. The enemy from within will be quickly silenced, even if that means imprisoned or eliminated.

Don’t imagine that Trump or Bannon are bluffing about any of this. It is precisely their promise to deliver this dystopia—and their capacity to do so—that has their billionaire buddies licking their chops and writing the Big Checks to fund their run at it.

The other branch of our Reigning Oligarchy we can call the “Patch It Up and Try to Salvage It” wing. “Patch It Up,” for short. That is the branch currently in the driver’s seat, the one invested in the slow, steady, methodical but relentlessly successful disenfranchisement of the working and middle classes and the strangulation of democracy in all but appearances.

But they’ve gotta go slow or the people (aka frogs in the pot) will notice the temperature of the water rising too quickly, and they’ll jump out. Barack Obama is the mouthpiece, maybe even the titular brain behind this wing. The truth is we’re not allowed to know. It’s all occluded in the gauzy, unctuous symbology of Democracy and Freedom and Liberty and Opportunity and such.

This was Bill Clinton, passing NAFTA and shafting tens of millions of metal benders in the industrial Midwest. It was his ending welfare as we knew it, while deregulating the banking, financial, and telecommunications industries. It was Obama handing $16 trillion to recapitalize the banks that went bankrupt in the Great Recession that they, themselves, had caused, while letting 10 million homeowners lose their homes to the foreclosure of predatory mortgages that the selfsame banks had issued. It is Biden and Harris funding and lustily cheerleading the 21st Century’s first televised genocide, all the while threatening World War III in Ukraine. Like Upton Sinclair said one time: “An honest politician is one who, once bought, stays bought.”

This wing is more strategic than the Burn-It-Down wing. Its highest priority is to keep hidden the strings on the political puppets that are danced before us to convince us that we have a working democracy. If people can see the strings, then the illusion is blown. And so, it’s all about elections. We are asked to watch "debates" or "participate" in town halls. We attend the rallies and listen to the stump speeches. From the July of 4th parades. to "Stars and Stripes Forever"—it’s all so entrancing, isn’t it? It's all so Hollywood and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. We so love our national mythologies, don’t we, especially the ones that flatter us that we’re in control of our common destiny?

They don’t want us to know that democracy—which is when the will of the people becomes enacted as public policy—requires not just elections, but legislating, as well. There, behind closed doors and in what used to be called “smoke-filled rooms” the real business of government is enacted as legislation. But we know that it is not the will of the people. It is the will of the Oligarchs, which is why they continue to fund it all. It's a Potemkin Democracy. Just don’t tell the people.

The business in those smoke-filled rooms is transferring the nation’s wealth, built up over centuries, to the already wealthiest (boy, is that ever working); slowly removing “burdensome” regulations to liberate the entrepreneurial energies of capitalism; greenlighting monopoly control of all sectors of the economy; privatizing everything that can be sold off; sluicing anything to the weapons makers that they demand; allowing the judiciary to be stuffed by right wing ideologues so that it can constrain anarchic, radical impulses like the right to vote, the right to control your own body, and the right to protest genocide being carried out in our names; it is allowing billionaires and corporations to put any amount of money they want into buying national elections, all the while calling it “Democracy.” That’s the Potemkin part.

This is the battle between the two branches of the Neoliberal Order that is our true, reigning, even if disguised and disavowed, national secular religion.

Beyond this Cosmic Battle Between the Oligarchs, our enrapturement with Donald Trump tells us that major powers in the media back his anointment to the presidency. How else could such a horrifically malignant force be allowed to dominate not just American politics, but American culture, as well? And for now, going on decades.

Watch any of the major cable networks and see how they interview an endless stream of Trump surrogates. It’s 2 minutes of letting the surrogates spew their mesmerizing, psychotic bile, with a feckless “fact check” at the end. Which presence, which narrative, do you think retains resonance with the viewers? It’s clear which one does. The fact that the surrogates keep coming tells you that they believe it’s working.

Or, read the top newspapers and political web sites. There’s the shameless euphemizing (“sanewashing”) of Trump’s most heinous, unhinged issuances. The normalizing of the lying, the grifting, the conspiracy mongering, the hate, the racism, the derogation of national sacraments like democracy and the rule of law. It’s the signaling of social acceptance accorded through the servile issuance of thuggishly perfumed social notice.

It’s like what used to be the status achieved in making the Society pages, or the Social Register, only now it’s the Political Pages and the Election Register. It is fawning, envious sycophancy, masquerading as journalism. It is the signaling from our betters about which cultural totems we are obliged to genuflect and bow down before.

Finally—and this doesn’t begin to exhaust the proctology of public pathology—is the collapse of culture that is signified in Trump’s elevation as our culture’s dominant avatar.

At one time, our culture venerated in its leaders and people such traits as dignity, thoughtfulness, self-restraint, civility, service, depth of character, courage, sacrifice, integrity, steadfastness, and honor. Remember? Even a scofflaw as noxious as Richard Nixon had to pay at least nominal homage to such cultural standards. Remember?

This is how the Greeks invented Western Civilization. Hesiod and Homer and Aesop and Sophocles and Euripides told ennobling stories to themselves, about themselves, in order to birth themselves, as themselves. It worked.

Do you see any of that in the adulation, indeed, the deification of Donald Trump? What you see is exactly the opposite.

You see the desecration of every one of those aforementioned-character ideals. Trump is garbage gilded as golden tennis shoes or a gold-plated toilet. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Entitlement personified. Imperious. Condescending. A coward phony to the core. Never took responsibility for anything. The dirtiest, most derelict, degenerate, dangerous deceiver ever to command the public’s attention. And he is sanctified in our culture, not in spite of these failings, but precisely for them. That is the tipoff.

Trump hasn’t so much failed us as we have failed ourselves in holding ourselves and our institutions to standards that we can respect. We have allowed our culture and media to become sewers, and tolerated in our politics and public personas dirtbags, lowlifes, grifters—are there any words of opprobrium that carry enough odium to awaken us from our besotted, bottom-dwelling revery? It doesn’t look like there are.

Simply put, Trump is who we as a nation have become because he is who we have idolized. Yes, yes, I see Kamala Harris, the standard bearer of the Patch-It-Up wing, dutifully, chirpily, joyfully begging for just one more chance on behalf of her string-pullers to make it all right.

My fear is not only that she might be too late. I’m not even sure anymore that she’s even right. She’s not going to begin to fix the systemic, engineered failings that gave birth to the endemic Burn-It-Down MAGA vengeance that threatens to, well, burn it down. And that surely will. That is precisely not why she is where she is in the first place.

She has spent her entire life as a standard bearer of the Patch-It-Up wing of the neoliberal order, which is to say, follow the same ends as the Burn-It-Down branch, but with more taste, more elan, more discretion, more nuance, more patience, more artfulness, more subtlety, more savoir faire, more grace, more (dare we say it?) Joy. But follow the ends, to be sure.

That is why Harris is who she is, and is where she is. You can’t let the temperature rise too quickly or the frogs will jump out of the pot, as the MAGA folks already have. Ultimately, that is why we are where we are today: perilously poised on the precipice of presidential perdition. Meanwhile, the shelf life of redemptive Joy—with all of the gravitas it ever deserved—is long since expired.

While it is rarely a top campaign issue, Americans care deeply about our health and well-being, the food we put in our bodies, and what corporations put into our food—especially when it comes to our children. We all want to know our food is safe and free of dangerous chemicals and additives that can cause serious health problems.

This electoral season, many Americans are asking: Who will make America healthier, Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump?

The difference is stark: Widespread evidence shows that Trump’s presidency rolled back many regulations governing toxic chemicals, while the Biden-Harris Administration acted to reduce our exposure to toxic chemicals.

In July 2017, a few months after taking office, Trump reversed a pending ban on the insecticide chlorpyrifos—a brain-damaging chemical linked to ADHD and autism. Chlorpyrifos is so toxic there are no determined safe consumption levels for infants and children. The reversal came after Trump met with the CEO of Dow Chemical, chlorypifos’s biggest manufacturer—and after the company donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration ceremony.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found levels of this pesticide are up to 140 times the limits deemed safe for adults in foods kids regularly eat.

On taking office, Biden-Harris restored that ban to protect our health.

Trump’s EPA approved more than 100 new pesticide products, many containing ingredients so toxic that they have been banned in other countries. Half a dozen new products, for example, contained the chemical paraquat, a substance so deadly that ingesting a spoonful can be fatal. Seventeen of these products contained the potent hormone disruptor atrazine, and several other Trump-approved products included the dangerous airborne fumigant methyl bromide.

Trump’s EPA also failed to act on PFAS, known as “forever chemicals,” found in our food, air, water, and even breast milk. These substances are linked to cancer, birth defects, thyroid disease, weakened immunity, and reproductive harm.

In contrast, Biden-Harris issued the first-ever drinking water standard for PFAS, investing more than $1 billion to protect Americans from these deadly chemicals.

The Trump Administration appointed a former chemical industry lobbyist to head the EPA’s division on chemical oversight. Under Trump, the agency rolled back a whopping 112 environmental protections, including regulations protecting our air and water and controlling many toxic substances. The Biden-Harris Administration has revived and strengthened many of these critical protections.

Trump further endangered our food and health by abolishing stronger organic animal welfare rules aimed at making our meat supply healthier for both people and animals. The Biden-Harris Administration restored these protections. Trump caused additional harm when he reversed limits on bee-killing and neurotoxic neonicotinoid (or “neonic”) pesticides in national wildlife refuges and signed an executive order scaling back regulations on GMOs.

Now, as if to magically erase these truths, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has launched a “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) campaign on Trump’s behalf. Kennedy insists Trump would end Big Food’s influence over federal health policies, “ban the hundreds of food additives and chemicals that other countries have already prohibited,” change policies and regulations to reduce processed foods, and “clean up toxic chemicals from our air, water and soil.”

While Kennedy raises important points about the corporate capture over food and health policy, the facts show these claims have no basis in reality. Kennedy’s MAHA bid is completely contradicted by Trump’s track record and the interests of his biggest corporate backers, including Big Agriculture and the chemical industry.

And Project 2025, a blueprint for a second Trump term authored in large part by Trump’s former staffers, is a repudiation of Kennedy’s “MAHA” goals—calling for massive deregulation that will only exacerbate the problems Kennedy rightly identifies. This includes removing GMO labeling and federal inspection requirements for meat and poultry processing; weakening the Endangered Species Act; reducing the influence of EPA science on pesticide approvals; and undermining or even eliminating the science-backed Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

That’s not a recipe for a healthier, less toxic America. For all Americans, especially parents, who are rightly concerned about toxic chemicals in our food and environment, Kamala Harris is by far the better choice.

This column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, a project of The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.

“War is not healthy for children and other living things,” reads a poster titled “Primer” created by the late artist Lorraine Schneider for an art show at New York’s Pratt Institute in 1965. Printed in childlike lowercase letters, the words interspersed between the leaves of a simply rendered sunflower, it was an early response to America’s war in Vietnam. “She just wanted to make something that nobody could argue with,” recalled Schneider’s youngest daughter, Elisa Kleven, in an article published earlier this year. Six decades later, Schneider’s hypothesis has consistently been borne out.

According to Save the Children, about 468 million children — about one of every six young people on this planet — live in areas affected by armed conflict. Verified attacks on children have tripled since 2010. Last year, global conflicts killed three times as many children as in 2022. “Killings and injuries of civilians have become a daily occurrence,” U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk commented in June when he announced the 2023 figures. “Children shot at. Hospitals bombed. Heavy artillery launched on entire communities.”

It took four decades for the United Nations Security Council to catch up to Schneider. In 2005, that global body identified — and condemned — six grave violations against children in times of war: killing or maiming; recruitment into or use by armed forces and armed groups; attacks on schools or hospitals; rape or other grave acts of sexual violence; abduction; and the denial of humanitarian access to them. Naming and shaming, however, has its limits. Between 2005 and 2023, more than 347,000 grave violations against youngsters were verified across more than 30 conflict zones in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, according to UNICEF, the U.N. agency for children. The actual number is undoubtedly far higher.

From the extreme damage explosive weapons do to tiny bodies to the lasting effects of acute deprivation on developing brains, children are particularly vulnerable in times of conflict. And once subjected to war, they carry its scars, physical and mental, for a lifetime. A recent study by Italian researchers emphasized what Schneider intuitively knew — that “war inflicts severe violations on the fundamental human rights of children.” The complex trauma of war, they found, “poses a grave threat to the emotional and cognitive development of children, increasing the risk of physical and mental illnesses, disabilities, social problems, and intergenerational consequences.”

Despite such knowledge, the world continues to fail children in times of conflict. The United States was, for instance, one of the members of the U.N. Security Council that condemned those six grave wartime violations against children. Yet the Biden administration has greenlit tens of billions of dollars in weapons sales to Israel, while U.S. munitions have repeatedly been used in attacks on schools, that have become shelters, predominantly for women and children, in the Gaza Strip. “Make no mistake, the United States is fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel,” President Joe Biden said recently, even though his administration acknowledged the likelihood that Israel had used American weaponry in Gaza in violation of international law.

And Gaza is just one conflict zone where, at this very moment, children are suffering mightily. Let TomDispatch offer you a hellscape tour of this planet, a few stops in a world of war to glimpse just what today’s conflicts are doing to the children trapped by them.

Gaza

The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place on Earth to be a child, according to UNICEF. Israel has killed around 17,000 children there since the current Gaza War began in October 2023, according to local authorities. And almost as horrific, about 26,000 kids have reportedly lost one or both parents. At least 19,000 of them are now orphans or are otherwise without a caregiver. One million children in Gaza have also been displaced from their homes since October 2023.

In addition, Israel is committing “scholasticide,” the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Palestinian education system in Gaza, according to a recent report by the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, a Palestinian advocacy group. More than 659,000 children there have been out of school since the beginning of the war. The conflict in Gaza will set children’s education back by years and risks creating a generation of permanently traumatized Palestinians, according to a new study by the University of Cambridge, the Centre for Lebanese Studies, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East.

Even before the current war, an estimated 800,000 children in Gaza — about 75% of the kids there — were in need of mental health and psychosocial support. Now, UNICEF estimates that more than one million of them — in effect, every kid in the Gaza Strip — needs such services. In short, you can no longer be a healthy child there.

Lebanon

Over four days in late September, as Israel ramped up its war in Lebanon, about 140,000 children in that Mediterranean nation were displaced. Many arrived at shelters showing signs of deep distress, according to Save the Children staff. “Children are telling us that it feels like danger is everywhere, and they can never be safe. Every loud sound makes them jump now,” said Jennifer Moorehead, Save the Children’s country director in Lebanon. “Many children’s lives, rights and futures have already been turned upside down and now their capacity to cope with this escalating crisis has been eroded.”

All schools in that country have been closed, adversely affecting every one of its 1.5 million children. More than 890 children have also been injured in Israeli strikes over the last year, the vast majority — more than 690 — since August 20th, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health. Given that Israel has recently extended attacks from the south of the country to the Lebanese capital, Beirut, they will undoubtedly be joined by all too many others.

Sudan

Children have suffered mightily since heavy fighting erupted in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. More than 18,000 people have reportedly been killed and close to 10 million have been forced to flee their homes since the civil war there began. Almost half of the displaced Sudanese are — yes! — children, more than 4.6 million of them, making the conflict there the largest child displacement crisis in the world.

More than 16 million Sudanese children are also facing severe food shortages. In the small town of Tawila in that country’s North Darfur state, at least 10 children die of hunger every day, according to a report last month in the Guardian. The population of the town has ballooned as tens of thousands fled El Fasher, North Darfur’s besieged capital. “We anticipate that the exact number of children dying of hunger is much higher,” Aisha Hussien Yagoub, the head of the health authority for the local government in Tawila told the Guardian. “Many of those displaced from El Fasher are living far from our clinic and are unable to reach it.”

More than 10 million Sudanese children, or 50% of that country’s kids, have been within about three miles of the frontlines of the conflict at some point over the past year. According to Save the Children, this marks the highest rate of exposure in the world. In addition, last year, there was a five-fold increase in grave violations of Sudanese children’s rights compared to 2022.

Syria

More than 30,200 children have been killed since the Syrian Civil War began in 2011, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights. Another 5,200 children were forcibly disappeared or are under arrest.

However little noticed, Syria remains the world’s largest refugee crisis. More than 14 million Syrians have been forced from their homes. More than 7.2 million of them are now estimated to be internally displaced in a country where nine in 10 people exist below the poverty line. An entire generation of children has lived under the constant threat of violence and emotional trauma since 2011. It’s been the only life they’ve ever known.

“Services have already collapsed after 14 years of conflict,” Rasha Muhrez, Save the Children’s Response Director in Syria, said last month. “The humanitarian crisis in Syria is at a record level.” More than two-thirds of the population of Syria, including about 7.5 million children, require humanitarian assistance. Nearly half of the 5.5 million school-aged children — 2.4 million between the ages of five and 17 — remain out of school, according to UNICEF. About 7,000 schools have been destroyed or damaged.

Recently, Human Rights Watch sounded the alarm about the recruitment of children, “apparently for eventual transfer to armed groups,” by a youth organization affiliated with the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration for North and East Syria and the U.S.-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, its military wing.

Ukraine

Child casualties in Ukraine jumped nearly 40% in the first half of this year, bringing the total number of children killed or injured in nearly 900 days of war there to about 2,200, according to Save the Children. “This year, violence has escalated with a new intensity, with missiles, drones, and bombs causing an alarming rise in children being injured or killed in daylight blasts,” said Stephane Moissaing, Deputy Country Director for Save the Children in Ukraine. “The suffering for families will not stop as long as explosive weapons are sweeping through populated towns and villages across Ukraine.”

There are already 2.9 million Ukrainian children in need of assistance — and the situation is poised to grow worse in the months ahead. Repeated Russian attacks on the country’s infrastructure could result in power outages of up to 18 hours a day this winter, leaving many of Ukraine’s children freezing and without access to critical services. “The lack of power and all its knock-on effects this winter could have a devastating impact not only on children’s physical health but on their mental well-being and education,” said Munir Mammadzade, UNICEF representative to Ukraine. “Children’s lives are consumed by thoughts of survival, not childhood.”

Ukraine also estimates that Russian authorities have forcibly removed almost 20,000 children from occupied territories there since the February 2022 invasion. A Financial Times investigation found that Ukrainian children who were abducted and taken to Russia early in the war were put up for adoption on a Russian government-linked website. One of them was shown with a false Russian identity. Another was listed using a Russian version of their Ukrainian name. There was no mention of the children’s Ukrainian backgrounds.

West and Central Africa

Conflicts have been raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for decades. World Vision has called the long-running violence there “one of the worst child protection crises in the world.” A 2023 U.N. report on children and armed conflict documented 3,377 grave violations against children in the DRC. Of these, 46% involved the recruitment of children — some as young as five — by armed groups.

Violence and intercommunity tensions in the DRC have forced 1,457 schools to close this year alone, affecting more than 500,000 children. And sadly, that country is no anomaly. In May, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, reported that more than 5,700 schools in Burkina Faso had been closed due to insecurity, depriving more than 800,000 children of their educations. And by mid-2024, conflicts had shuttered more than 14,300 schools in 24 African countries, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council. That marks an increase of 1,100 closures compared to 2023. The 2024 closures were clustered in West and Central Africa, mainly in Burkina Faso, the DRC, Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria, and Niger. They have affected an estimated 2.8 million children.

“Education is under siege in West and Central Africa. The deliberate targeting of schools and the systemic denial of education because of conflict is nothing short of a catastrophe. Every day that a child is kept out of school is a day stolen from their future and from the future of their communities,” said Hassane Hamadou, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Regional Director for West and Central Africa. “We urgently call on all parties to conflict to cease attacks on and occupation of schools and ensure that education is protected and prioritized.”

Feet of Clay

It’s been six decades since Lorraine Schneider unveiled her poster and her common-sense wisdom to the world. She’s been proven right at every turn, in every conflict across the entire planet. Everywhere that children (not to mention other living things) have been exposed to war, they have suffered. Children have been killed and maimed. They have been physically, psychologically, and educationally stunted, as well as emotionally wounded. They have been harmed, assaulted, and deprived. Their bodies have been torn apart. Their minds – the literal architecture of their brains – have been warped by war.

In the conflict zones mentioned above and so many others — from Myanmar to Yemen — the world is failing its children. What they have lost can never be “found” again. Survivors can go on, but there is no going back.

Schneider’s mother, Eva Art, was a self-taught sculptor who escaped pogroms in Ukraine by joining relatives in the United States as a child. She lost touch with her family during World War II, according to her daughter Kleven, and later discovered that her relatives had been killed, their entire shtetl (or small Jewish town) wiped out. To cope with her grief, Art made clay figurines of the dead of her hometown: a boy and his dog, an elderly woman knitting, a mother cradling a baby. And today, the better part of 100 years after the young Art was forced from her home by violence, children continue to suffer in the very same ways — and continue to turn to clay for solace.

Israa Al-Qahwaji, a mental health and psychosocial support coordinator for Save the Children in Gaza, shared the story of a young boy who survived an airstrike that resulted in the amputation of one of his hands, while also killing his father and destroying his home. In shock and emotionally withdrawn, the boy was unable to talk about the trauma. However, various therapeutic techniques allowed him to begin to open up, according to Al-Qahwaji. The child began to talk about games he could no longer play and how losing his hand had changed his relationship with his friends. In one therapy session, he was asked to mold something out of clay to represent a wish. With his remaining hand, he carefully shaped a house. After finishing the exercise, he turned to the counselor with a question that left Al-Qahwaji emotionally overwhelmed. “Now,” the boy asked, “will you bring my dad and give me my hand back?”

While the name of the next president is unknown, some outcomes of the election can be foreseen. For instance:

• President Biden’s successor will be a dangerous militarist.

Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are supporters of boosting already-huge Pentagon budgets along with continuing U.S. warfare in many forms. Trump likes to pander to voters who don’t want endless wars, but his actual policies as president kept them going. Harris’s glimmers of senatorial interest in scaling back military largesse faded into standard bellicosity. Both candidates beat cold-war drums, with Trump focusing on China rather than Russia.

• If Trump wins, corporate Democrats and mainstream media will blame the Harris campaign for not moving rightward enough.

Progressive ideas, as usual, will be convenient scapegoats for the failures of Democratic Party elites.

• If Harris wins, corporate Democrats and mainstream media will immediately warn that she must steer clear of the left.

The establishment is ever alert to the danger that progressive populism could majorly reduce income inequality and subdue corporate power.

• If Trump wins, progressives will be on the defensive for at least four years -- unable to accomplish anything of substance at the federal level and trying to mitigate the damage under an unhinged and fascistic president.

The disasters with a second Trump administration will include unleashed nativism and official bigotry. As one liberal commentator observed weeks before the election, “More than ever, Trump’s rhetoric is steeped in racism, xenophobia and dehumanization. He routinely calls immigrants ‘vermin’ and says they are ‘poisoning the blood’ of the country. He claims they are ‘stone-cold killers,’ ‘animals’ and ‘the worst people’ who will ‘cut your throat.’ . . . He called migrants from Latin America, Congo and the Middle East ‘the most violent people on Earth.’ . . . He’s even suggested that nonwhite immigrants have ‘bad genes’ that make them genetically inferior.”

• As in the past, the Green Party will again congratulate itself on the tiny percentage of votes for its latest presidential candidate (after the party’s nominee received 0.36 percent in 2012, 1.07 percent in 2016 and 0.26 percent in 2020).

In October, this year’s Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein campaigned in swing states and declared: “This is a very dire situation that will be continued under both Democrats and Republicans. So we say there is no lesser evil in this race.”

Really?

• If Harris wins despite his best efforts, Benjamin Netanyahu will be disappointed that he was unable to sufficiently help get Trump elected.

“For anyone who doubts Trump will be even worse than Biden is on Gaza,” Mehdi Hasan tweeted a mid-October video clip of Trump saying that Netanyahu “is doing a good job, Biden is trying to hold him back... and probably should be doing the opposite. I'm glad that Bibi decided to do what he had to do.’”

• Whether Trump or Harris wins, the U.S. government will continue to support Israel’s killing of Palestinian civilians under the guise of its “right to defend itself.”

If Trump wins, virtually all Republicans and many Democrats in Congress will support his unequivocal backing for whatever Israel does. If Harris wins, we can expect her policies toward Israel to be dreadful, while she’ll be subject to increasing pressure from much of her party’s base and some Democratic members of Congress for an end to arming Israel.

• In response to the climate emergency, Harris has foreshadowed that her policies would be predictably inadequate, while Trump has repeatedly denied that a climate crisis even exists.

The burden will be on activists to demand actions commensurate with the realities described in The 2024 State of the Climate Report: “We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis.”

• No matter whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris is inaugurated on Jan. 20, the challenges for progressives will be enormous.

A Trump presidency will push progressives back on our heels, in a dire defensive position as we fight to protect rights and programs won during many previous decades. With a Harris presidency, progressives will have some space to organize, with potential to actually move some U.S. government policies in a positive direction.

The election will be over in a few short weeks, but there are still many progressives who are angsting over who to vote for at the top of the ticket. Might a better understanding of the role elections play in people-powered social change help us make our decision?

Distilling hard-earned lessons from election dilemmas faced by earlier social movements, here are seven key insights you can bookmark and carry with you into the voting booth:

1. Vote Today for the Candidate You Want to Pressure Tomorrow

As generations of grassroots organizers have said: Elections are just one small part of larger movements for progressive change, so “vote for the candidate you want to organize against!”

Former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln doesn’t deserve credit for ending slavery any more than former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt deserves credit for the massive labor movement of the 1930s, or Lyndon B. Johnson for the accomplishments of the Civil Rights Movement. These huge historic victories were won by the hard and dedicated work of social movements—millions of everyday people taking concerted action.

Voting is not a love letter, it’s choosing a bus, so choose the one that can get you closer to where you want to go.

At the same time, each of these presidents were an important part of the equation, inasmuch as they were responsive to the pressure exerted by people’s movements.

Who sits at the top matters for our chances at big progressive wins. And there’s no question that in 2025 and onwards, we are more likely to win progressive victories if we are lobbying, pressuring, protesting Vice President Kamala Harris (a rational actor who knows what it’s like to be a women, immigrant, and POC), than former President Donald Trump (an irrational actor who has shown more willingness to repress the left than listen to us.). Also, progressives are the junior partners in Harris’ coalition and she is at least partially accountable to us.

As Aurora Levins Morales says, “We are choosing an opponent, not a leader.” We’re picking our fight. Voting is not a love letter, it’s choosing a bus, so choose the one that can get you closer to where you want to go.

2. Who Are You Taking Into the Polling Booth With You?

When you go into the voting booth on November 5, you are not just voting for yourself. Think of all the people you are in solidarity with—often the most marginalized and vulnerable people—who will be brutally impacted by a future Trump presidency: Muslim Americans when Trump issues his Muslim Ban 2.0; the 15 million undocumented immigrants who he plans to “round up,” cage, and forcibly deport; women who will increasingly lose the right to make decisions over their own bodies; Palestinians whose lives will be further brutalized under Trump; Ukrainians who will be abandoned by Trump’s sycophancy to Russian President Vladimir Putin; transgender students when Trump uses federal law as a cudgel to override critical state-level protections; working people who will lose hard-won rights, safety, and pay while the rich get runaway tax breaks; not to mention how one of our very last chances to preserve a livable planet will be lost to Trump’s climate denialism and plan to “drill baby, drill.” These are the people who will be impacted by your vote. Bring them with you to the voting booth.

3. Even on Palestine, Trump will be far worse than Biden-Harris

President Joe Biden has been terrible on Palestine. (As has pretty much every other U.S. President.) We don’t know if a future President Harris would break with Biden on Palestine, but with statements like, “I will always fight for the Palestinian people to be able to realize their right to dignity, freedom, security, and self-determination,” who knows. It’s evident to anyone on the left that Democrats should take concrete action to halt the violence (including an arms embargo, immediate humanitarian aid delivery, and an end to settler violence) not only because it’s the moral course of action, but because not doing so will likely cost them crucial votes from the Arab-American community and beyond. Right now, however, Harris seems unwilling to take that risk; instead, she is courting Republicans, taking money from the Israel lobby, and pursuing a broadly centrist election strategy. Once elected, however, she may be more susceptible to pressure than her predecessor, and certainly than her opponent. Not to mention, a fresh Democrat in the Oval Office could bolster senators to join Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) call for an arms embargo when his bill comes to the floor mid-November.

We don’t know how any of this will play out, but we do know that, with Trump promising to “give Bibi whatever he wants” and calling for repression of student protesters on campuses, progress on Palestine will be much harder under Trump. Don’t take our word for it; here’s how the co-founder of the Uncommitted Movement, Abbas Alawieh, describes how hard it would be to organize for a free Palestine under a future Trump presidency:

Trump’s son-in-law is fantasizing about million-dollar condos on Gaza’s beach. He’s taking campaign contributions from people who want the full annexation of the West Bank. So we also have to be very clear about the rise of global authoritarianism, of which Trump and the Republican Party’s MAGA extremism is a face. We have to take stock of what it would look like for Trump to be president and whether we’re doing the difficult work of this moment—which is not pretty, and a lot of folks don’t want to hear it—in the sense of telling people and being clear about what our organizing would look like under Donald Trump. 4. I Want a Better (Climate) Catastrophe

Regardless of who we vote for in 2024, we’re in for a very rough climate future. Neither Harris nor Trump are going to do what is truly necessary on climate (just like no existing government anywhere in the world is doing so.) But under Trump—who is a full-on climate denier—we know that it will be far, far worse: He will pull the U.S. our of Paris accords; “start drilling on day one”; he’s already made a $1 billion deal with fossil fuel CEOs to give them “whatever they want”; and the official blueprint for Trump’s program, Project 2025, calls for a “whole-of-government unwinding” of U.S. climate policy. So when you fill out your ballot, are you going to vote for a better catastrophe (Harris) or the worst possible climate catastrophe (Trump)?

People and the planet are suffering, and under a second Trump term, people would suffer worse. So, let’s defeat Trump today and fight for a Green New Deal tomorrow.

5. How Will You Feel the Morning After?

Pause for a moment. Imagine it’s Wednesday morning, November 6, and you’re waking up to a Trump victory. How do you feel?

Take that terrible gut-check feeling to the polls with you. When a friend of mine did this thought experiment with herself, she immediately headed to Pennsylvania to knock on doors.

Take a cue from these sorry notes from real voters who recall waking up on a brisk morning in 2016 to the nightmare that Trump had taken the election and imagining the ensuing chaos.

6. Things Getting Worse Won’t Get Us Closer to Things Getting Better

If you’re considering staying home in November because “maybe things have to get worse before people wake up,” or abstaining to “put the Dems on notice,” you should know that this notion is unsupported by historical evidence. Worsening conditions are not correlated to larger-scale progressive mobilization. Indeed, the opposite is more true.

What does put wind in progressive sails is seeing people’s movements win, and the belief in the possibility that things could change for the better—what social movement scholars call “raised expectations.” From Black Lives Matter to Medicare for All to the Green New Deal, we have been on a trajectory of raising expectations for over a decade now.

Think about it: Are four more years of having to fight defensive actions against Trump’s mass deportations, climate denial, even more weaponry to Israel, and the possible end of democracy itself (“Vote for me once and you’ll never have to vote again.”) really going to help your cause?

No. But what will help our cause is a partial victory now—defeating Trump and his fascist posse—that’ll also put us on more fertile political terrain for more victories to come. This election is not about our own personal expression. It’s about stopping fascism. It’s about mitigating pain and suffering.

7. Voting Your Conscience Means Voting Strategically

Too often it feels like we’re made to choose between two bad options. Harris is hardly an ideal candidate, and it’s hard for some of us to cast our individual vote for her “in good conscience.” But isn’t that the capitalist logic of our era tricking us into thinking that voting is primarily an individual choice, an act of personal expression?

A truly discerning conscience considers the broader context and the collective consequences of our actions, not just how we might feel in the moment. It’s not about staying “pure”; it’s about building and wielding collective power and putting ourselves on a trajectory to win structural change. It’s not about “me”; it’s about “us.” Voting is a strategic—and collective—act of harm reduction.

And, reality check: We are voting in a broken two-party system in which corporations are people and a handful of states get to call the election due to an outdated Electoral College. Our massive national election could come down to a few thousand votes in seven key swing states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.)

So dithering over whether to vote for Harris in California is somewhat of a waste of time. Better to phone a friend in Pennsylvania and see if they have a plan to vote. And what if friends in swing states still can’t bring themselves to pull the lever for Harris? Luckily there’s a time tested way to vote with both our head and heart: Vote swapping. Voters across the country are teaming up to defeat Trump in swing states and cast protest votes in safe states. And you can join them.

It Really Is up to Us

We’re living through an epoch that is defined by crisis. Decades of neoliberal policies*—passed under both Republican and Democratic administrations—have culminated in crisis after crisis, where millions of Americans have been harmed, and no one has been held accountable.

Somewhere along the way we started waking up to the fact that the people who broke America aren’t going to fix it; and that it’s up to us to win an America that works for the many, not just the few.

However, we do not yet have enough people power to win the changes we want—to defang Big Oil or stop weapons shipments to Israel—but progressive forces have more momentum than we’ve had in decades. To continue to gain ground, we need to keep building our movements and elect more people’s candidates.

But right now our forward trajectory depends on stopping Trump in his tracks. Our organizations, movements, and people’s candidates are engaged in an incredibly consequential contest for the future. It’s up to us to defeat Trump in 2024. We can’t count on anyone to do it for us. We need all hands on deck. That means voting for Harris and working to persuade others to do the same.

But even as we give that absolutely critical task all we’ve got, we must remember that a single presidential election won’t get us out of this mess. Voting is just one tool in a larger landscape of struggle that we engage in together. In fact, we can use this election to build long-term progressive power.

Rather than volunteering with the Harris campaign or the Democratic Party, we can volunteer for grassroots people’s organizations, like Working Families Party and Seed the Vote, and donate through Movement Voter Project, which funds long-term progressive grassroots organizations who do voter mobilization cycle after cycle. All these efforts are also working to elect people’s champions in down-ballot races.

And join forces with these organizations who are preparing to pressure a Harris administration. We’ve got to get ourselves ready to go on Day One—because no one is going to do that for us either.

So let’s power through this election, and in January 2025 unite to advance a non-fascist, as-progressive-as-we-can-make-it agenda. Another world is possible—if we build it.

*To list all the elite failures of the past decades would blown us way past the max word count on this article, but here’s a sampling: from the Iraq War to the Deep Horizon oil spill; from Hurricane Katrina to Helene; from the financial meltdown and the foreclosure crisis to runaway rents and skyrocketing inflation; from the opioid crisis to the expanded carceral state; from runaway economic inequality to persistent racial injustice; from pandemic deaths to toxic misinformation; from sending weapons to the Israeli bombardment of Gaza to unfolding climate catastrophe.

Some language was incorporated with permission from the 2020 project NOT HIM, US, written by Jonathan Matthew Smucker and Andrew Boyd.

Although barely mentioned in the mainstream media, in granting cert to Interim Storage Partners, LLC v. Texas, a case about the storage of spent radioactive fuel from nuclear power plants, the U.S. Supreme Court may have taken on potentially the most consequential case of its new term.

SCOTUS will decide whether or not to uphold a Fifth Circuit decision that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) does not have the legal power to license a private corporation to construct an off-site storage facility to hold deadly radioactive waste from nuclear power plants.

Depending on the legal rationale for SCOTUS’ decision, it could further enhance the power of courts to overturn decisions of regulatory agencies.

The case could determine whether artificial intelligence companies like Microsoft and Google can build a new generation of nuclear power plants to service the voracious hunger of artificial intelligence for electricity. Depending on its rationale, it could also impact the ability of regulatory agencies to function efficiently without being second guessed by courts.

The issues in the case have brought together an unlikely coalition of environmentalists, Texas Republicans, New Mexico Democrats, and the oil and gas industry against an equally unlikely grouping of the Biden administration, the nuclear power industry, and AI tech companies like Microsoft and Google.

The Legal Substance Issues

The environmental and legal issues in the case have a long history. The nuclear power industry has accumulated nearly 100,000 metric tons of radioactive waste that need to be deposited in a place that could be safe for millions of years. Most of the waste is now stored in temporary facilities adjacent to the power plants that create them, but such sites are running out of space and may not be safe long-term. During the 1980s Congress passed and amended the Nuclear Waste Policy Act providing for a permanent waste site and then designating Yucca Mountain, Nevada as the sole site. But plans for the site were abandoned due to environmental and political opposition, leaving no permanent site for disposable nuclear waste.

In response, for the first time the Nuclear Regulatory Commission began to grant licenses for “interim” storage facilities which were off-site (and often hundreds of miles away) from the power plants which generated the waste, claiming authority under the Atomic Energy Act. One such license was for an off-site storage facility in the Permian Basin, Texas. Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton and a private oil and gas company sued, claiming that the federal government lacked the statutory authority to issue a license for interim off-site storage.

The conservative Fifth Circuit agreed with the plaintiffs, opining “Texas is correct. The Atomic Energy Act does not confer on the commission the broad authority it claims to issue licenses for private parties to store spent nuclear fuel away-from-the-reactor. And the Nuclear Waste Policy Act establishes a comprehensive statutory scheme for dealing with nuclear waste generated from commercial nuclear power generation, thereby foreclosing the commission’s claim of authority.”

The Fifth Circuit vacated the license. The U.S. Supreme Court just granted cert and will hear the case this term. Its decision will likely be highly consequential, both for environmental and AI development reasons, and for legal reasons.

Environmentally, the building of new nuclear power plants has been stalled for decades, both because of cost and because of environmental catastrophes like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima and anti-nuclear films like Mike Nichols’ Silkwood starring Meryl Streep.

The Role of High-Tech Companies in Expanding Nuclear for AI

But largely under the radar, the voracious demand for electricity to power AI is leading top high-tech companies like Microsoft and Google to reinvigorate nuclear energy. Goldman Sachs analysts say it takes nearly 10 times the energy to power a ChatGPT than a Google search—data center power center demand will grow by 160% in the next five years. Morgan Stanley projects global data center emissions to accumulate 2.5 billion metric tons carbon-dioxide equivalent by then.

Microsoft has contracted for the currently mothballed Three Mile Island plant to reopen and access its entire output for Microsoft’s data centers. The operator is seeking hundreds of millions in tax breaks from the federal government under President Joe Bidens’s Inflation Reduction Act, which it says are necessary to make the reopening economically feasible. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has said in the past that federal subsidies could cut the cost of bringing a new plant online by as much as half.

In March an Amazon affiliate purchased a nuclear-powered data center in Pennsylvania for $650 million.

It will be highly consequential if SCOTUS simply upholds the Fifth Circuit’s result, which would greatly slow high tech’s attempts to kick start nuclear power without time to reexamine the environmental dangers.

Just this week Google announced that it will support building seven small nuclear-power reactors in the U.S., to help power its growing appetite for electricity for AI and jump-start a U.S. nuclear revival.

The tech companies claim that reviving nuclear power will decrease CO2 emissions and help with global climate change. But they ignore the long-standing warnings of environmentalists of the potentially catastrophic dangers of nuclear power.

If SCOTUS upholds the Fifth Circuit decision outlawing the licensing of off-site nuclear waste dumps, it could considerably slow the renewed push for nuclear power, particularly by high-tech companies. That might give more time to evaluate the potential dangers of widespread renewal of nuclear power.

But depending on the legal rationale for SCOTUS’ decision, it could further enhance the power of courts to overturn decisions of regulatory agencies.

The Fifth Circuit used several rationales to block the license of temporary off-site nuclear waste facilities. The first, and least concerning, is its statutory holding that the Atomic Energy Act is “unambiguous” and “nowhere authorizes issuance of a materials license to possess spent nuclear fuel for any reason, let alone for the sole purpose of storing such material in a standalone facility.” If SCOTUS upholds the Fifth Circuit purely on statutory interpretation grounds, it would create few problematic precedents for regulatory agencies in general.

The Major Questions Doctrine

But the Fifth Circuit unnecessarily went further, holding that “even if the statutes were ambiguous, the [government’s] interpretation would not be entitled to deference by the courts” pursuant to the Chevron Doctrine, under which for previous decades, until recently rejected by the Roberts Court, judges deferred to the expertise of regulatory agencies when reasonably interpreting ambiguous statutes.

The Fifth Circuit cited SCOTUS’ precedent-setting 2022 decision in West Virginia v. EPA, in which, for the first time, a conservative majority of SCOTUS justices relied on the “major questions” doctrine to overturn a major Environmental Protection Agency rule. Under the newly invented “major questions” doctrine, SCOTUS ruled that courts should not defer to agencies on matters of “vast economic or political significance” unless the U.S. Congress has explicitly given the agencies the authority to act in those situations.

Citing West Virginia v. EPA, the Fifth Circuit held that “[D]isposal of nuclear energy is an issue of vast ‘economic and political significance.’ What to do with the nation’s ever-growing accumulation of nuclear waste is a major questions that—as the history of the Yucca Mountain repository shows—has been hotly contested for over half a century.”

It’s questionable whether the Fifth Circuit needed to reach the issues concerning the major questions doctrine in order to block the waste depository. It had already decided that the statutes were “unambiguous” and therefore it was not necessary to decide what would happen if they were “ambiguous,” which is the only situation in which the major questions doctrine might arguably apply. If SCOTUS wants to affirm the Fifth Circuit’s result, it can simply agree that the statutes were unambiguous and treat the parts of the decision involving the major questions doctrine as mere dicta. That would set no additional precedent for when courts can question the expertise of regulatory agencies.

What Party Has the Right to Sue?

There’s also a procedural issue in the case, that depending on SCOTUS’ rationale, could set precedent allowing a wider range of entities to legally challenge regulatory agency decisions. Under the Hobbs Act, a “party aggrieved” by an agency’s final order may seek judicial review in a federal appeals court.

The NRC argued, however, that the plaintiffs were not parties aggrieved by the NRC’s licensing order because they were not parties to the underlying administrative proceeding. The Fifth Circuit cited its own precedent asserting that the Hobbs Act contains an “ultra vires” exception to the party aggrieved requirement when the petitioner attacks the agency action as exceeding its authority and therefore the plaintiffs had a right to sue.

In granting cert SCOTUS agreed to rule on two questions. First is the substance issue on whether the government exceeded its authority in granting the off-site nuclear storage license. The second is the procedural issue of whether an allegation of ultra vires can override statutory limitations on jurisdiction, as the Fifth Circuit held. If SCOTUS rules that the Fifth Circuit was wrong to grant jurisdiction to the plaintiffs, the likely result would be that the licenses for off-site nuclear waste facilities would go forward and expand.

It will be highly consequential if SCOTUS simply upholds the Fifth Circuit’s result, which would greatly slow high tech’s attempts to kick start nuclear power without time to reexamine the environmental dangers. At the same time, if SCOTUS also rules that the plaintiffs had an ultra vires right to sue, it could further cripple the ability of regulatory agencies to act to protect the public interest under broad grants of power.

He’s the man of the hour (and you can choose your hour), win, lose, or draw. I mean, who can deny it? Certainly not the crowd at his debate with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris that, as he reminded us recently, absolutely “went crazy” over what he had to say. (And it couldn’t matter less that the event had no live audience whatsoever.) In a sense, he isn’t wrong. After all, it’s still all too possible that, in a couple of weeks, he could once again be elected—yes!—president of the United States.

Indeed, it’s as yet unclear whether American voters will decline The Donald, but what is increasingly clear—there can’t be a doubt on the subject—is that he himself is on the decline in a typically wild and mad sort of way. And yet he might indeed still be elected to lead (even if that hardly seems the right word anymore) this country. And what exactly does that tell us about this all-American world of ours?

All too much, I fear. Above all, that it’s increasingly anything but all-American.

The United States is not just going down as a global power but potentially, in some fashion, beginning to disintegrate domestically as well, even possibly as a democracy.

Can you believe that only 30-plus years ago, after the Soviet Union collapsed, this country, the very one Donald Trump might once again preside over, was considered (at least in Washington) the “lone superpower” on planet Earth? And in some sense, it actually was. After all, the great European imperial powers were ancient history by then, the Russians in a state of post-Cold War devastation, and communist China had yet to truly begin its rise. But like all great imperial powers, it should now be far clearer that, in the wake of a seemingly endless series of lost wars abroad, its global “moment” has long been ending. Its ability to command or direct the world now seems largely a thing of the past. There can be little question any more that the (increasingly dis-)United States is an imperial power on the decline.

Make America Grotesque Again?

Don’t misunderstand me. This country remains all too powerful when it comes to its military and nuclear forces. Just check out the latest Pentagon budget or the more than 40,000 American military personnel, battleships, aircraft carriers, jet fighter planes, and who knows what else deployed to a Middle East that Israel is now blowing sky-high. But if you want a measurement of just how far the Lone Superpower has fallen, keep in mind that, once upon a time not so terribly long ago, an Israeli leader like Benjamin Netanyahu would never have dared to pay so little attention to the desires of Washington when it came to his actions in the Middle East. Once upon a time, a figure like Netanyahu couldn’t have ignored the wishes of the top officials of the very country still arming his own in a staggering fashion, while doing whatever he damn well pleased to tear his region to shreds.

Consider him visible evidence that this country is indeed no longer the world’s lone superpower (and not just because of the rise of China either). Yes, the Pentagon budget remains a staggering (and still increasing) affair, but something has certainly changed. Consider it anything but symbolic (though it is that, too) that 81-year-old Joe Biden is by far the oldest president in American history. (Ronald Reagan left office at age 77.) Worse yet, should Donald Trump win re-election this November and last until the end of his term, he would set a new record and leave Biden in the aging dust of history.

While it no longer even occurs to observers to use a phrase like “lone superpower” when it comes to the United States, it still seems that, in a deeper sense, the reality of this country’s imperial decline has yet to be fully taken in here, even by those who no longer see it as the operative great power on Planet Earth. In truth, it’s not just that it has lost much of its grandeur and influence abroad but that, though this is seldom mentioned in such a context, it’s visibly coming apart at the seams right here at home and that should, of course, be a significant part of any definition of imperial decline. As it happens, such a decline of a major global power will always prove anything but a distant foreign affair.

Whether Donald Trump wins or loses Election 2024, this country is in trouble deep and, four years from now, its situation could be almost unimaginable.

Even if it’s not normally thought about or written about that way, it is, in fact, happening right here, right now, in these increasingly dis-United States of America in a distinctly up close and personal fashion. At this point, you can, in fact, see evidence of it almost any time you turn on the news. In some sense, it couldn’t be more graphic or literal. After all, former president Donald Trump, once again running for president, is, symbolically speaking, declining before our very eyes as he rants and verbally stumbles in a distinctly declinist fashion, even if to the cheers of striking numbers of his MAGA fans and followers. (By the way, in light of recent history, isn’t it perhaps time to redefine MAGA as Make America Grotesque Again?)

And yes, in these years of imperial decline, Donald Trump has gotten (whether positively or negatively) almost unprecedented attention here at home. Sometimes, in fact, it seems as if he (and he alone) is the news. But here’s the truly strange thing: He, the MAGA movement, and Election 2024 are seldom seen for what (at least in part) they really are. He, that MAGA phenomenon, and the 20 million—yes, 20 million!—military-style AR-15 automatic rifles (the best-selling rifle in America) now in private hands—mainly the mitts of those who are White, male, between the ages of 40 and 65, and have accompanied him into this version of America—actually represent the truest sign of imperial decline imaginable in the place its leaders still like to think of as the greatest on Planet Earth.

Yes, Donald Trump is living, breathing evidence that this country is none too slowly coming apart at the seams. I mean, when in our history could you count on the fact that, if one candidate for president loses the upcoming election, he (and yes, it distinctly is a he) will undoubtedly claim that it’s been stolen from him and that he actually won? And his followers, significant numbers of them armed to the teeth, will agree with him and do who knows what (but nothing good). And of course, were he instead to win, four years later you can count on one thing: In some sense, this country is likely to be politically unrecognizable. If you don’t believe me, just check out the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 to get a sense of the direction that a whole crew of his former officials and other Trumpian types think it should head. In other words, the United States is not just going down as a global power but potentially, in some fashion, beginning to disintegrate domestically as well, even possibly as a democracy. And if that isn’t both the functional and the literal definition of “decline,” what is?

Let me just say that, if I could bring my parents back from the (long) dead and tell them the fantastic story of Donald Trump and how he became president or, for that matter, how the Supreme Court, led by six right-wing (including three Trump-appointed) justices, essentially immunized a significant range of his illegal acts in office by granting him “presumptive immunity” for them, I guarantee you they wouldn’t have believed such a thing possible. Nor would they have believed that a “businessman,” without the slightest political background, who survived multiple (and I do mean multiple) bankruptcies and was best known for hosting a reality (or perhaps irreality) TV show, The Apprentice, for 14 seasons that tested the supposed business skills of its contestants, could become president of the United States.

Trump’s very victory in 2016 should, in other words, have instantly been seen as the functional definition of American imperial decline—a crucial sign of the weakening and potential collapse of this country’s position in the world translated into domestic politics. And an election victory this November could, in the end, mean both the figurative and literal bankruptcy of the American system, while his defeat, in a nation now armed to the teeth, could give chaos a new name in the imperial homeland.

In other words, whether Donald Trump wins or loses Election 2024, this country is in trouble deep and, four years from now, its situation could be almost unimaginable. It could be run by a degenerating 82-year-old madman or, even with Kamala Harris in the White House, a country in an ever more deeply divided and increasingly violent state of mind. It will not be, as it proudly proclaimed itself once upon a distant time, “the leader of the free world,” nor is it likely to be a fully functional global superpower (though what chaos or devastating violence its “fall” could bring the world, including future conflicts with China, remains hard to imagine).

Chill, Baby, Chill?

And let’s not forget that, in some sense, that may be the least of our problems. After all, as we’ve experienced all too recently with hurricanes Helene and Milton, whatever devastation may lie ahead socially and politically for this country, another kind of devastation is fast becoming a distinct (and distinctive) part of everyday life, here and in the world at large. Whether we’re talking about increasingly powerful storms or ever more devastating fires and floods, we’re on a planet that’s heading for trouble in a big-time fashion.

The fact is that we all now live on a different Earth, one that’s clearly going to experience devastating weather of every imaginable sort. Climate change, in other words, is truly our new reality, and it’s clear that the devastation has only begun.

As ever more homelands on this planet become ever less livable and ever greater numbers of us begin wandering in search of places to inhabit—yes, Donald, climate change is indeed creating a previously inconceivable world of “illegal immigrants”!—imagine the once greatest power on planet Earth with a president who still insists that global warming is a “hoax.” Imagine a president on this very planet right now who plans, above all else, to “drill, baby, drill” from his first day back in the White House—and that’s in the nation that’s already the world’s record producer of oil and natural gas.

You might almost imagine that climate change had grasped the withering global power of the United States and decided to act accordingly.

That should, of course, be the definition of creating a dysfunctional country on an increasingly dysfunctional planet, one where the old imperial dreams of so many “great powers” will have ever less meaning.

Yes, the Middle East is now in ever greater chaos as the Biden administration’s support for Netanyahu only continues, even as he draws even more of the region into disastrous conflict, while hardly bothering to consult with Washington’s top officials. Still, count on one thing: The chaos you see out there now is, in its own eerie fashion, already coming home to roost and if Donald Trump ends up back in the White House, believe me, we’ll need another term entirely than “lone superpower” to describe this country.

Might the planet’s “great stupid power” work?

And mind you, despite the rise of China, it still remains an open question, whether there can be another lone superpower of any sort or even a truly great power on a planet all too literally going to hell in a (flaming) handbasket, one whose land surface and ocean temperatures have already hit record levels with far worse to come.

You might almost imagine that climate change had grasped the withering global power of the United States and decided to act accordingly. In some fashion, we now seem to be on a post-imperial planet in which—if only—the best approach would be: chill, baby, chill.

In the run-up to the November election, we are witnessing a massive expenditure of “dark money” in a disinformation campaign designed to depress the Arab American vote in Michigan and the American Jewish vote in Pennsylvania.

During the past three election cycles we’ve seen “dark money” play an increasingly important role in U.S. elections. Dark money refers to expenditures from groups that ostensibly operate independently from official campaigns and whose funds need not be reported. We’ve also seen disinformation campaigns before; that is, organized efforts to use deceptive, misleading, or exaggerated claims for political advantage.

A dark money group undertook such an effort in 2020, when it sought to derail Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) presidential campaign with a sizable television ad buy claiming he was too old (despite the fact that the candidate against whom he was running was about the same age), or that he was too radical to win (despite the fact that Sanders had already won most of that year’s primaries and polls showed him beating the expected Republican nominee by a larger margin than any of the other Democrats in the field). What made the effort more dishonest was that the group sponsoring the ads was the Democratic Majority for Israel. They wanted to defeat Sanders because they didn’t trust his more balanced approach to the Middle East. But knowing that argument wouldn’t win over Democratic voters, they never mentioned Israel in their ads—a clear case of using both disinformation and misinformation for a political end.

“What would be the impact of these ads if they were reversed, with Arab American voters targeted with the pro-Palestinian ads and American Jewish voters targeted with the pro-Israel ads?”

That effort’s success encouraged more pro-Israel dark money groups to join the fray in 2022 and 2024, spending well over $100 million in more than a dozen congressional races. Once again, they promoted misleading or exaggerated claims calling into question the character or leadership qualities of the candidates they opposed without ever mentioning that their goal was to defeat those whom they deemed insufficiently pro-Israel.

What we’re seeing in this election is more dark money disinformation, but with a deceptively ingenious twist. A pro-Donald Trump group is spending tens of millions of dollars targeting both Arab American and American Jewish voters in two battleground states, Michigan and Pennsylvania, with contradictory messaging designed to discourage them from voting for the Democratic nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris. This effort includes direct mail, and digital ads on social media platforms like: X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook.

Almost daily, Michigan’s Arab Americans voters in precincts of heavy concentration are receiving glossy mailings with messages like: “Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff: Unwavering Support for Israel” or “Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff, the ultimate pro-Israel power couple” or “Kamala Harris and Elissa Slotkin [the Democratic candidate for Senate in Michigan]: The proven team we can trust to stand up for the Jewish community.” And targeted video messaging on social media sites saying things like “Kamala Harris stands with Israel.”

Meanwhile, in areas of Pennsylvania where there are heavy concentrations of Jewish voters, homes are receiving messages like: “Kamala Harris will embolden antisemites” or “Donald Trump always stands up for the Jewish people.” And targeted video messaging on social media platforms saying “Kamala Harris will not be silent about human suffering in Gaza” or “Two-faced Kamala Harris: Standing with Palestine and not our ally, Israel.”

These mailings and social media posts are paid for by a dark money group, Future Coalition PAC. Researchers have identified that one of the major donors to this group is Elon Musk, the principal owner of X and a strong supporter of Donald Trump’s presidential bid.

It’s important to note that the videos used in these ads contain Harris speeches in which she, in fact, makes statements that are very supportive of Israel and others in which she expresses sympathy with Palestinians suffering in Gaza or the right of students on campuses to protest injustice. What makes this effort classic disinformation is the selective use of these quotes and the way they are used to make exaggerated claims in an effort to mislead targeted groups of voters, discouraging their support for the Democratic candidate. To look at it in another way, we can ask, “What would be the impact of these ads if they were reversed, with Arab American voters targeted with the pro-Palestinian ads and American Jewish voters targeted with the pro-Israel ads?”

Disinformation has long been a problem in American elections. Now with massive expenditures from dark groups and their ability to use advanced micro-targeting to identify and deceive specific voter groups using their social media behavior, what was a problem has now become a crisis.

I am reminded that on two separate occasions in the last two years a group of Democratic National Committee members tried to get the party to ban the use of dark money in primaries. We warned that allowing billionaire Republican donors to skew our elections with disinformation and misinformation was a threat to our democracy. Both times the party leadership blocked our effort to have a vote on our resolution. Little did we know that just a year later, the very dark money disinformation effort funded by Republican donors about which we warned could very well contribute to upending the campaign of the Democratic nominee for president.

The recent natural disasters caused by the Helene and Milton tropical cyclones in the Southern U.S. have triggered unfounded and ill-informed conspiracies about the origin of the disasters and the government’s involvement in weather modification. Despite being based on ill-informed claims that defy common sense, these conspiracies have historical contexts.

In a broader sense, the modern state’s drive to dominate nature and its rich history of accumulation by dispossession are the prototypes and contexts for such conspiracies. Environmental conspiracies have long been an integral part of the larger conspiracy against nature, which treat nature as a cornucopia of resources external to human identity and society that must be dominated to maximize its utility.

Environmental conspiracies have long served the interests of power structures, enabling them to control people and societies by dominating nature. These false claims have significantly shaped modern Western techno-bureaucratic approaches to nature and the environment. Interestingly, many of the dominant misguided claims were not propagated by ordinary people but by epistemic circles within the state apparatus, including scientists, ecologists, geographers, and naturalists who were and are part of the bureaucratic and technical machinery of the colonial or neocolonial states.

The rhetoric and discourse about the “brutality,” “ferocity,” or “violence,” of nature imply the pressing necessity for the state to manage, regulate, and exert control over nature and natural processes.

One of the conspiracy theories surrounding recent natural disasters involves the alleged involvement of the U.S. federal government in controlling and harnessing these disasters for political and economic ends. Although this claim that the Biden administration has manipulated Hurricane Milton is ludicrous, the desire to exert control over nature and natural processes has long been the inspiration of the modern state and its techno-bureaucratic machinery, at least since the European Enlightenment. From the colonial state manipulating and altering ecological landscapes, socio-ecological practices, and dismantling traditional knowledge sources, to current efforts to manipulate and control planetary processes through techno-bureaucratic techniques, such as geoengineering and planetary management, the domination and control of nature have remained an active pursuit within the state’s or state-supported technocratic and epistemic circles. Control over nature is part of the rationalizing and moralizing mandate of the modern state.

Embedded in the works of influential Enlightenment thinkers was establishing mastery over nature. This maxim provided a clear intellectual foundation for the systematic and cumulative progression in the understanding of nature through the means and tools of natural sciences within the epistemological fabrics of empiricism. Francis Bacon, an early Enlightenment philosopher, advocated for scientists to meticulously observe and accurately measure natural processes to gain mastery over them. He also proposed that the government should financially support these scientific pursuits to achieve such mastery. Consequently, in tandem with the progress in natural science, Western colonial and post-colonial states financed and endorsed scientific, and at times pseudo-scientific, undertakings to exert dominance over nature.

Colonial Fabrications

Although Bacon proposed a methodical approach to gathering evidence, involving a continuous interaction between theory and evidence, in the colonies, the European colonial states couldn’t afford to postpone their loot and plunder for the sake of a time-consuming scientific process or exert their power over nature and people. Instead, they resorted to ecological conspiracies and ill-informed theories to justify and rationalize their socio-ecological intervention and domination.

During colonial rule in al-Maghrib, French colonial ecologists expounded ecological conspiracies that gained widespread acceptance as scientific facts, even to an extent today. Drawing on biblical narratives, they claimed that the Sahara Desert had once been a fertile and lush geography that had served as the Roman Empire’s granary. They further doubled down on the conspiracy and blamed the native people’s social and ecological practices for transforming the once lush region into the arid Sahara. Scientifically, there is no evidence suggesting that the Sahara Desert was green during the Roman Empire. Contrary to the colonial ecologists’ claim, recent scientific evidence indicates that the Saharan region was just as arid and harsh at the end of the last Ice Age as it is today.

India essentially served as a testing ground for British colonial “experts” to validate and perpetuate their ecological conspiracies and schemes and violence against nature.

The environmental conspiracy provided a convenient excuse for colonial powers to justify their oppression and domination by blaming the natives for an imagined ecological catastrophe. It also justified European dominance and invasions by claiming a historical responsibility to restore the Sahara to its original fertile state, which they portrayed as a region that could once again supply Europe with agricultural goods. This justification not only upheld European colonial control but also moralized and materialized their plunders by dispossessing Indigenous people of their lands and resources.

In South Asia, the colonial administrators, experts, and operatives faced the challenge of dealing with unpredictable rivers, especially those originating from the Himalayas. They devised environmental conspiracies that long served as scientific claims. In Northern India, facing persistent failure to contain and control the flow of the Indus and other mighty rivers for centralizing irrigation practices, British colonial experts wrongly attributed the frequent destructive floods in the upper Indus Valley to the obstruction of the rivers by glaciers in their upper regions. Lacking evidence, they based their speculative scientific claims on their knowledge of European rivers.

Environmental conspiracies by the colonial British in India were mostly due to the unscientific socialization of colonial experts. Many of these experts, such as ecologists, hydro- and civil- engineers, and geographers, were not trained as scientists but rather as soldiers, military officers, or colonial operatives. Their roles as scientists in India were more out of necessity, primarily driven by the need to assert control over nature by manipulating socio-ecological practices to maximize economic plunder. As a result, these colonial agents engaged in extensive and unregulated ecological experimentation, which resulted in numerous human tragedies such as floods, famines, and diseases. India essentially served as a testing ground for British colonial “experts” to validate and perpetuate their ecological conspiracies and schemes and violence against nature.

U.S. Misinformation

Environmental conspiracies and conspiracies against nature for ecological and social exploitation were not confined to 19th-century European colonial powers; similar ideas flourished in the United States as well. James Espy, the first official American meteorologist, lobbied Congress for funding to burn forests of Appalachia in hopes of inducing rain. A storm enthusiast, much like today’s amateur storm chasers, Espy initially worked as a schoolteacher before he devoted himself to studying storms. He believed that burning forests could trigger rain.

Although Congress ultimately declined to back Espy’s proposal, it did allocate funds for Robert Dyrenforth’s rain theory. In the late 19th century, the Senate approved funding for Dyrenforth, a former Civil War general and an engineer by profession, who proposed that creating loud noises through explosives in the atmosphere could agitate clouds and cause them to release rain. Drawn from his experiences during the war, Dyrenforth’s idea was a bold attempt to manipulate weather patterns.

After his experiment of tossing dry ice into the cloud at the Schenectady airport in New York caused a cloud to dissipate and turn into rain, Irving announced in joy that mankind finally learned how to control the weather.

In the summer of 1891, Dyrenforth and his team of rainmaking enthusiasts, which included a meteorologist from the Smithsonian Institute and a college professor, embarked on a series of experiments by waging several attacks against the atmosphere. They launched an all-out assault on the sky detonating blasting dynamite, firing mortar shells, igniting smoke bombs, flying electrified kites, setting off oxy-hydrogen balloons, and even unleashing a spectacular array of fireworks. The intention was to manipulate the natural process of rainmaking.

Controlling the atmospheric dynamics in the United States has not been the hobby or fixation of weather enthusiasts. Scientists equally contributed to the fascination of dominating and controlling the atmosphere. During the initial years of the Cold War, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist and chemist Irving Langmuir claimed to have developed a method of harnessing and controlling hurricanes. After his experiment of tossing dry ice into the cloud at the Schenectady airport in New York caused a cloud to dissipate and turn into rain, Irving announced in joy that mankind finally learned how to control the weather. Around this time, weather manipulation became a strategic goal during the Cold War. The political and geopolitical landscape of the era compelled the two superpowers to engage scientists and harness scientific advancements to manipulate weather and nature for their strategic objectives and goals.

Against Nature

These examples could easily, and also rightly, be viewed as anecdotal. However, beyond these specific instances, there exists a common and overarching ontological premise that has led to various scientific and pseudo-scientific experiments. Moreover, this premise also influences popular environmental conspiracies and techno-bureaucratic/epistemic conspiracies against nature. The premise is the aspiration to dominate nature. Although Irving was indeed a bright scientist, the setting of his experiment parallels those of colonial scientists—or so-called scientists—active in regions like al-Maghrib and South Asia. They all sought to assert control over natural processes. In the 21st century, amid ongoing ecological crises, this mission has broadened its scope to include the manipulation and management of global planetary systems and processes.

The enabling context for popular environmental conspiracies, such as those that emerged following the two tropical cyclones in the southern United States, is an overarching reductionist, simplistic, and anthropocentric understanding of nature. It isn’t, however, an outlook born from the minds of everyday individuals; rather, it reflects a deeper understanding of modern civilization rooted in the logic of the modern state, influenced by Enlightenment ideals. It is further implemented through the techno-bureaucratic apparatus of the state that aims to realize the state’s legal and moral duty of monopolizing violence, whether caused by humans or nature. The rhetoric and discourse about the “brutality,” “ferocity,” or “violence,” of nature imply the pressing necessity for the state to manage, regulate, and exert control over nature and natural processes.

Nature is not an external entity out there to be controlled and dominated. On the contrary, it is a complicated self-regulating and self-perpetuating collection of processes, elements, and mechanisms, where humans are as much a part of it as non-human living and non-living elements. Although contemporary humans, through their advanced material-technological culture, can manipulate various aspects of nature, we—along with our political and social structures, including the state—often struggle to predict or design the outcomes of such interventions.

Nature is an agent of its own. It can reset the disruptions and offsets caused by humans. How this happens remains a mystery. Although we can understand its processes to some extent, the reactions and resetting mechanisms are ultimately unknown. This highlights an important lesson for modern humanity, especially for the power structures: Rather than trying to manage, regulate, or control the planetary processes, we must focus on minimizing our footprints and encroachment into the boundaries of nature now more than ever.

I was 10 years old when Hurricane Sandy hit my home city of Baltimore, Maryland. I remember vividly my family all sleeping in the living room together, towels covering the floor to soak up the water that seeped into our house from unexpected places. I remember watching the storm from the dining room window and seeing a tree fall—just missing my next-door neighbor, who was outside in the storm. There were 72 direct deaths as a result of Hurricane Sandy in the Mid-Atlantic region alone.

Sandy was only a Category 1 Hurricane when it hit Baltimore, but it was seared into my mind as one of the scariest events of my life. It was also one of the first times I felt unsafe—even though I was at home and under the watch of my parents.

In the span of 12 days, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and surrounding states were hit with not one, but two deadly hurricanes, Hurricane Helene and Milton, that were far more destructive and traumatic than the one that I experienced 12 years ago. So far, it has been recorded that more than 250 people have died as a result of Hurricane Helene and Milton. There are still over a million people without power, or access to food, water, and shelter.

Extreme weather is killing people long after the weather event is over.

The destruction from a hurricane or any extreme weather event doesn’t just end when the power lines are restored and the schools open again. To most victims, the physical rebuilding is only the beginning of the recovery process. The rest remains invisible to everyone else.

Survivors of hurricanes grapple with losing family members and neighbors, homes, and local businesses like cafés and movie theaters that make their communities special. It isn’t hard to understand why the climate crisis and mental health crisis go hand in hand.

Currently, our rates of mental illness—especially that of young adults—are at an all-time high. It has been shown that suicide rates in the two years after a hurricane significantly increase by 31%. And this doesn’t account for the effect of extreme weather on the exacerbation of PTSD, substance abuse disorders, depression, and other mental illnesses. Extreme weather is killing people long after the weather event is over.

Climate change in general can have a detrimental impact on mental health—especially for young people. In a survey of more than 10,000 children and young people around the world, almost half stated that their feelings about climate change negatively affect their daily life and functioning. As Dr. Britt Wray writes in her book, Generation Dread, young people’s distress is also “linked to perceptions of government betrayal and being lied to by leaders who are taking inadequate climate action while pretending otherwise.”

It is crucial, now more than ever, that we elect leaders who will fight climate change and all the destruction it causes to our communities, homes, minds, and spirits.

While in office, former U.S. President Donald Trump withheld disaster and emergency aid multiple times—initially refusing wildfire assistance in California in 2018, withholding wildfire assistance to Washington in 2020, and refusing hurricane disaster funds to Puerto Rico in 2017, all because he didn’t receive political support from those places. And he continues to invest in the companies that are fueling this extreme weather.

It’s clear that Trump isn’t concerned about helping disaster victims, and it’s also clear that with an exponentially warming climate, we will continue to see increased extreme weather events and consequently more victims in need of support.

Vice President Kamala Harris, on the other hand, understands the urgency of tackling the climate crisis while also recognizing that investing in technologies of the future can fuel economic growth.

In fact, with the Biden administration, she’s created over 300,000 new clean energy jobs through the Inflation Reduction Act and spurred a clean-energy manufacturing boom, all while investing billions in climate resilience—making sure that victims and potential victims are supported by the federal government even before a disaster happens. She has also prioritized tackling the youth mental health crisis, announcing $285 million earlier this year for schools to hire 14,000 mental health counselors to give students the support they need to thrive.

What America needs, now more than ever, are leaders who will take climate change and the mental health crisis seriously, and who will assist anyone who is victimized by extreme weather, not just those who are politically like-minded. That’s why we should elect Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

“The past carries unforgettable trauma and pain across the land and among generations of refugees; yet we choose to transform victimhood into agency. We want to be the authors of our future.”

Let these words resonate. In a sense, they’re all we have—if we oppose war and envision a future that transcends it. I’ve quoted these words of Ali Abu Awwad before. They’re part of the Palestinian Nonviolence Charter, but they reach beyond Palestine: deep into the soul, and the hope, of all humanity.

Is there a human future that isn’t in the hands solely of global militarism—war—and the “world leaders” who serve it? Are ordinary people no more than spectators in a world in which some 13,000 nuclear weapons remain stockpiled and ready for use, with our collective suicide an ever-present possibility? Can the pursuit of peace—dismissed by so many with a cynical shrug—ever truly challenge the legitimacy of war?

I nonetheless celebrate and honor every proponent of peace, as they push beyond their spectator status and do what they can to help author humanity’s future.

There’s an irony to these questions, because peace means understanding one’s enemy, not destroying him—something far more complex than a “fight or flight” mentality can comprehend. Intensifying the irony is the fact that those who pursue peace at the deepest, most profound levels are oh so often those most victimized by the global racists and warmongers. Whereas waging war—waging murder—seriously minimizes the scope of one’s humanity, enduring its consequences can expand it.

I confess to a deep frustration about all this. While waging peace means embracing the uncertainty of who we are, waging war is psychologically simple and linear: good verus evil, us versus them. Organizing a social structure—e.g., “the USA”—around war and militarism is far easier than organizing it around wholeness and understanding. Does that mean we’re stuck with war—at least until we nuke ourselves out of existence?

I don’t know the answer to that question. But I nonetheless celebrate and honor every proponent of peace, as they push beyond their spectator status and do what they can to help author humanity’s future.

Consider, for instance, the Hibakusha... the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 (which killed some 200,000 people), as well as survivors in later years of the fallout and hellish effects of nuclear testing around the world.

And yes, 79 years later, some survivors of the Little Boy and Fat Man atomic bombs are still with us. Many of them have devoted their lives to telling the world about the realities they endured in those bombings. And last week, the organization Nihon Hidankyo, to which many Hibakusha belong, received the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s been a long time coming!

Nihon Hidankyo was founded in 1956, essentially in defiance of Japan’s U.S. occupiers, which, according to the organization’s website, “strictly prohibited the people to write or speak about the bombing and damages, including the miserable deaths of 200,000 people, from the Japanese government even after the country regained its sovereignty in 1952.”

They knew the world needed to know what they had endured. The world still needs to know. Yes, seven years ago, the United Nations (by a vote of 122-1) created the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, declaring nuclear weapons to be... uh, illegal. But the vote was boycotted by the world’s nine nuclear-armed nations, along with all of NATO—and, in any case, the treaty only applies to the countries that have signed and ratified it: 73 countries as of today.

So something is happening here. Post-nuclear peace—or simply peace itself—may still be confined to the social margins, but peace proponents, especially those who have transformed their own victimhood into agency, continue pushing against the norm.

“For over half a century since its founding,” the site informs us, “Nihon Hidankyo has sent Hibakusha delegations to many parts of the world in order to give testimonies on the atrocious damage and human sufferings caused by the use of nuclear weapons, and endeavored to ensure no more Hibakusha would be created anywhere in the world, calling for creating a ‘nuclear weapon-free world.’”

This is not an abstraction, even though the perpetrators of war do their best to make it so. For instance, some months ago, as the Israeli assault on Gaza was getting underway, Israeli cabinet minister Amichai Eliyahu suggested during an interview that using a nuclear weapon on Gaza was a distinct possibility.

In response, 85-year-old Toshiko Tanaka, who lived in Hiroshima and was six years old when her city was nuked, said in outrage that Eliyahu “doesn’t realize how terrible the use of nuclear weapons is...”

“I hope,” she added, “that the leaders of each nation will not put their own national interests first, but look at the world as a whole and determine a path toward peace.”

If only she could be heard—across the infinite divide separating those in power, especially members of the so-called “nuclear club,” from ordinary humans! “The world as a whole” is where we all live. It’s one entity. If we don’t learn how to live as one, we’ll die as one.

In the heated run-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Vice President Kamala Harris has increasingly focused her campaign rhetoric on portraying former President Donald Trump as an existential threat to American democracy. Her warnings, particularly regarding Trump's recent comments about eliminating the "enemy within," have struck a chord with many voters concerned about the potential for authoritarian overreach. However, this narrative, while addressing a genuine concern, risks oversimplifying the complex realities of the American political system and its relationship with capitalism.

Trump's portrayal of those who oppose him as enemies of the state aligns with a global trend of populist leaders leveraging such rhetoric to consolidate power. From Hungary’s Viktor Orbán to Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, populist leaders have employed similar narratives to justify authoritarian policies that weaken democratic institutions, muzzle the press, and erode civil liberties. Harris is positioning herself as a staunch defender of the rule of law and democratic norms in this broader context. She frames Trump’s potential resurgence as an existential threat to American democracy and underscores the importance of resisting the erosion of democratic principles that have, thus far, defined the U.S. political system.

Yet, while Harris is right to sound the alarm on the dangers of authoritarianism, her narrative risks oversimplifying the complex relationship between democracy, inequality, and power in the United States. By focusing solely on Trump’s authoritarian threat, Harris potentially reinforces a narrow conception of American democracy that ignores deeper, structural forces. Specifically, it neglects how the capitalist underpinnings of the U.S. political and economic system have long facilitated the marginalization and criminalization of vulnerable populations—particularly poor and working-class communities—through neoliberal policies that commodify punishment.

The Authoritarian Specter: Trump's Rhetoric and Harris's Response

Trump's recent statement on Fox News that "the enemy from within... is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries" has sparked widespread alarm. Harris, seizing on these comments, has positioned herself as a defender of democratic norms against what she describes as Trump's "unstable and unhinged" pursuit of "unchecked power."

At a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, Harris played a recording of Trump's comments, telling the crowd, "A second Trump term would be a huge risk for America." This framing of the election as a battle for the soul of American democracy has become a central theme of Harris's campaign.

The vice president's focus on Trump's authoritarian tendencies is not without merit. Trump's presidency was marked by numerous challenges to democratic norms, from attempts to overturn the 2020 election results to his handling of the January 6th insurrection. His recent comments about the "enemy within" echo authoritarian rhetoric used by leaders who seek to consolidate power by demonizing opposition.

The real challenge to U.S. democracy lies not just in resisting populist leaders, but in addressing the structural inequalities that render large segments of the population politically and economically disposable.

Harris's running mate, Tim Walz, has gone even further, suggesting that Trump's musings about using the military against domestic foes was unAmerican, proclaiming at a recent rally “He crossed a line that, I have to tell you, in my lifetime, I would have never imagined because we know our history.” This escalation in rhetoric reflects the Democratic campaign's strategy to paint Trump not just as a political opponent, but as a fundamental threat to the American system of government.

However, while the threat posed by Trump's rhetoric is real and concerning, the narrative put forward by Harris risks reinforcing a simplistic view of American democracy that overlooks deeper, systemic issues. It also raises questions about the role of fear in political discourse and the potential consequences of portraying political opponents as existential threats.

The Creation of "Disposable" Populations

While Trump’s rhetoric undeniably carries authoritarian overtones, the existence of an “enemy within” is not solely a product of populist demagoguery. It is, in fact, a feature that has long been ingrained in the U.S. capitalist system. Underlying the fabric of American democracy is a system that routinely designates certain populations as “disposable” for the sake of profit and control. These populations—often defined by race, class, and immigration status—are rendered politically and economically expendable, targeted by punitive systems that feed into the broader machinery of profit-driven incarceration and surveillance.

The prison-industrial complex in the U.S. is one of the clearest manifestations of how capitalism creates and profits off a constructed “enemy within.” The United States, with only 4% of the world’s population, houses nearly 20% of the world’s prison population. The private prison industry, coupled with the massive expansion of surveillance technologies and for-profit rehabilitation services, has transformed incarceration into a multi-billion-dollar industry. This system is deeply racialized and class-based: people of color and economically marginalized groups are disproportionately represented in the incarcerated population, while wealthier individuals are more likely to escape punitive measures altogether.

Kamala Harris, in her previous role as a prosecutor and later as California’s Attorney General, was often seen as part of this very system. Though she has since positioned herself as a reformer, Harris was, during her tenure, known for supporting “smart on crime” and “tough on crime” policies that contributed to the growth of mass incarceration. Her decisions not to pursue wrongful conviction cases, or to defend the use of cash bail, played a role in perpetuating a system that disproportionately punished marginalized communities under the guise of public safety.

This complicity points to a broader political dynamic that extends beyond partisanship. Both Democrats and Republicans have, over the years, embraced punitive policies to address social inequality, often framing criminal justice as a mechanism for maintaining law and order, rather than acknowledging the systemic inequalities that drive crime in the first place. This bipartisan embrace of "tough on crime" policies is symptomatic of neoliberal governance, which responds to social problems with punishment rather than investment in communities. The focus on crime control serves to obscure the deeper economic and racial inequalities embedded in American capitalism, allowing political leaders to position themselves as defenders of public safety while neglecting the underlying social conditions that create cycles of poverty and criminalization.

The Myth of U.S. Democracy and Capitalist Authoritarianism

Kamala Harris’ warnings about Trump’s authoritarianism rest on an implicit assumption: that the U.S. is, at its core, a liberal democracy under threat from an aberrant figure. However, this narrative reinforces a myth about American democracy that ignores the capitalist mechanisms that have always shaped the country’s political system. The danger of framing Trump as a singular threat to democracy is that it obscures the extent to which capitalist democracy itself has always been exclusionary, privileging certain groups while marginalizing others.

The U.S. has long upheld the notion of democracy alongside policies that systematically disenfranchise the poor, the racially marginalized, and the working class. Voting restrictions, gerrymandering, and the overwhelming influence of money in politics have all functioned to limit true democratic participation. At the same time, economic inequality continues to deepen, with a small percentage of wealthy individuals and corporations exerting disproportionate influence over political decision-making. This capitalist framework creates the conditions for authoritarianism, even within a supposedly democratic system, by concentrating power in the hands of a few while rendering large swaths of the population politically and economically invisible.

[A] capitalist framework creates the conditions for authoritarianism, even within a supposedly democratic system, by concentrating power in the hands of a few while rendering large swaths of the population politically and economically invisible.

Trump’s populist authoritarianism thrives on these very contradictions within American democracy. His rhetoric about eliminating the “enemy within” speaks to a broader fear among many Americans that their interests are being ignored by political elites. However, what Trump capitalizes on is not a departure from American norms, but rather an intensification of a process that has been in motion for decades. The designation of certain populations—immigrants, the poor, people of color—as enemies of the state has long been part of the U.S. political landscape. This is not solely the product of Trump’s authoritarianism, but of a system that treats marginalized groups as expendable in order to maintain the political and economic status quo.

Harris, by focusing on the authoritarian threat posed by Trump, risks reinforcing the notion that American democracy is fundamentally democratic and that the primary danger lies in external forces like Trump or populist movements. This analysis, however, overlooks the ways in which capitalism itself breeds forms of authoritarianism that target the most vulnerable populations, regardless of who is in power. The bipartisan embrace of neoliberal policies has resulted in the mass incarceration of millions, the erosion of labor rights, and the deepening of economic inequality—all of which contribute to the creation of a political system where large segments of the population are disenfranchised and left vulnerable to state violence.

Moreover, the private prison industry, which profits from the criminalization and incarceration of these populations, exemplifies how capitalism and authoritarian practices are interwoven. The commodification of punishment, surveillance, and rehabilitation has created a system where justice is not about accountability or rehabilitation, but about profit. This is the essence of capitalist authoritarianism: a system in which marginalized populations are rendered disposable for the sake of economic gain, while the rhetoric of democracy is used to justify these actions.

The U.S. political system, underpinned by neoliberal capitalism, has long designated certain populations as “enemies within”—those who are economically, racially, and socially marginalized. The private prison industry, the mass surveillance apparatus, and the commodification of punishment are all products of a capitalist system that thrives on the creation of “disposable” populations. Harris’ own history as a prosecutor highlights the complicity of centrist politicians in this process, as “smart on crime” and “tough on crime” policies have perpetuated the cycle of inequality and incarceration.

The real challenge to U.S. democracy lies not just in resisting populist leaders, but in addressing the structural inequalities that render large segments of the population politically and economically disposable. Without a reckoning with these deeper forces, warnings about authoritarianism will continue to ring hollow, while the underlying system of exclusion and inequality remains intact.

Last academic year saw university students across North American campuses form Gaza solidarity encampments to protest Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians and their universities’ financial complicity in the carnage. The sit-ins received widespread media coverage and helped carry Israel’s crimes against Palestinians to the top of the Western news agenda.

Although these campus protests were overwhelmingly peaceful and included many anti-Zionist Jewish students and faculty, Israel’s supporters in media, politics, and academia itself responded to the demonstrations by accusing protesters of peddling antisemitism and intimidating Jewish students. Toward the end of the academic year, police dismantled most of these campus protests, arresting hundreds of students in the process and charging them with crimes ranging from third-degree trespass to felony burglary.

Now, as a new academic year starts and Zionist genocidal aggression continues in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon students are once again mobilizing in protest. These student protesters are already facing further intimidation from university administrations, threats from political leaders, abuse from the police, and unsubstantiated accusations of antisemitism from mainstream media. Moreover, campuses this academic year are facing a new threat: intimidation from so-called Zionist “self-defense” groups with far-right links.

Zionist vigilante groups like the JDL employ the same “self-defense” rhetoric and methodologies used in Palestine since 1948 to justify offensive aggression and colonization while appropriating Jewish victimhood and conflating it with Zionist criminality.

At the University of Toronto, Magen Herut Canada (Defender of Freedom Canada), a volunteer-based Zionist vigilante group affiliated with Herut Canada—an organization tied to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right, revisionist Likud Party, which advocates for the “Greater Israel” settler-colonial vision—was mobilized to ostensibly “defend” Jewish students from what they claim to be protesters’ antisemitism.

Magen Herut plans to expand its “volunteer safety patrols” across Canada and into the United States. Membership requires ideological alignment with Zionism and experience in policing, security, or the military. With more than 50 members, Magen Herut coordinates through WhatsApp groups to patrol up to 15 zones, including university campuses, and to appear at Gaza solidarity protests, where they intimidate attendees. They go on patrol in sizeable groups, wearing black T-shirts that identify them as members of the Magen Herut “Surveillance team.” The group’s leader, Aaron Hadida, a security expert, teaches “Jewish self-defense,” including the use of firearms. Magen Herut works closely with J-Force, a private security firm that provides “protest security” for Israel supporters. J-Force deploys volunteers to pro-Palestine events in tactical gear. Both groups are expected to remain active on campus throughout the academic year.

Zionist activists with the Jewish Defense League (JDL), a Southern Poverty Law Center designated hate group whose stated goal is to “protect Jews from antisemitism by any means necessary,” have also been spotted at pro-Palestinian events at the university. The group, which was largely inactive prior to October 7, was deemed a “right-wing terrorist group” by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2001,

Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that several “counter-protesters” waved flags with the JDL or the Kahane Chai symbol on them at a small pro-Palestine march at the University of Toronto on September 6. Kahane Chai is a fascistic Israeli group tied to JDL, which advocates for the forced expulsion of Arabs from Israel. Other participants in the Zionist action, the newspaper said, were seen wearing Kahane Chai caps and shouting chants calling for violence against Muslims and Palestinians, including “Let’s turn Gaza into a parking lot.”

The JDL has a long history of racist violence and terrorism. Its members bombed Arab and Soviet properties in the U.S. and assassinated those it labelled “enemies of the Jewish people,” focusing on Arab American activists. They were linked to several 1985 bombings, one of which killed West Coast Regional Director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee Alex Odeh; the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre when 29 worshipers were fatally shot in a Hebron mosque during Ramadan; and a 2001 plot targeting U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) in his San Clemente, California district office and the King Fahad Mosque in Culver City, California.

The presence of uniformed far-right Zionist “patrol teams” and JDL flags at the University of Toronto is alarming. It means that persecutory tactics long used by Zionists to curb anti-colonial resistance in Palestine and elsewhere are now being imported into North American university campuses, which in the past year became epicenters of anti-Zionist resistance and solidarity between anti-colonial movements in the West.

The aim of these Zionist groups is twofold: fracture, weaken, and defame intersectional resistance to white supremacy, which of course includes Zionism, and provide support for U.S.-led Western imperial expansionism and genocide, spearheaded by Israel.

To divert attention away from their far-right ties, fascist roots, and blatant aggression against anti-genocide student protesters, the Zionist vigilantes active at the University of Toronto duplicitously frame themselves as Jewish “self-defense” forces.

The concept of “self-defense” has vastly different meanings for the colonized and the colonizer. For the colonized, “self” is tied to cultural identity, ancestral land, and vital resources. Whereas for the colonizer, it is grounded in a constructed identity, land theft, and the protection of stolen resources along with shifting blame for resistance to colonization onto the colonized victims. Indeed, the leading Zionist militia from 1920 through the 1940s, the precursor of the “Israel Defense Force,” was named Haganah, meaning “defense” in Hebrew, and was a major force in appropriating Palestinian land and ridding it of its native population.

Zionist vigilante groups like the JDL employ the same “ self-defense” rhetoric and methodologies used in Palestine since 1948 to justify offensive aggression and colonization while appropriating Jewish victimhood and conflating it with Zionist criminality. They invoke fear in order to produce subservience and support for their eliminatory agenda. These groups rely on the concepts of deterrence and dehumanisation of Palestinians to justify extreme measures, framing their actions as defensive, thus obfuscating the potential illegality that comes with offensive aggression whilst responding to perceived threats with lethal force.

Zionist vigilante groups on Northern American university campuses target anti-genocide protesters under the guise of “Jewish defense” as a means of defending white supremacy in its Zionist and American forms and fracturing anti-colonial resistance led by Palestinian, Black, brown, Indigenous, immigrant, and Jewish anti-Zionists.

In contrast, the anti-colonial alliance, both in North America and globally, is built on a shared understanding that white supremacist oppression is entrenched in systemic racism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, and imperialism. By presenting a united front against all forms of racism and capitalism, it challenges the colonial and neocolonial establishments. As part of this resistance, it rejects Zionism as a white supremacist, European-driven project, drawing parallels to other manifest destiny ideologies that have fuelled Western settler-colonial ventures, including in the U.S.

Regardless of the outcome of the upcoming U.S. elections, white supremacy, Islamophobia, and antisemitism continue to rise across North America. Additionally, the election discourse risks diverting attention from the threats posed by the increasing presence of Zionist groups with direct ties to far-right violence. To challenge it, people, including Jews, must stand against all forms of ethnocentrism and exclusion. The Jewish community’s long history of trauma and persecution should inspire a unified pursuit of justice, freedom, and equality for everyone, rejecting Zionist vigilante terrorism.

The United States is the single most powerful supporter of the Israeli settler colony.

The U.S. government heavily arms and gives political cover to Israel, and considers the people at the mercy of its aggression as America's enemies. And president after president, Republican and Democrat, has enabled Israel to commit war crimes, crimes against humanity, and even genocide with total impunity.

The current genocide Israel is committing in Palestine is legally and morally placed at the doorstep of the U.S.

Therefore, what happens in the U.S.—especially when the political mainstream begins to wake up and see Zionism for the apocalyptic genocidal fanaticism that it is—matters for world peace.

For generations, liberal Zionists have infiltrated the ranks of American liberal imperialists with terror visited upon the world. West and Mishra saw through Coates clearly; now, so has he.

Zionists—whether Israeli or American, Christian or Jewish—do not like the prospects of that awakening.

As the racist and colonial nature of Israel's regime became more widely recognized, the experiences between Palestinians and the African American community also became more prominently linked, especially in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Over the last year, several outlets—from The New York Times to Politico, Vox, and others—published articles examining the history of Black and Palestinian solidarity.

Indeed, these discussions emerged in full force after 7 October 2023 as several leading African American public figures and intellectuals made clear their stance on Israel—even making headlines on "how Gaza has shaken Black politics."

When U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield raises her hand and vetoes one Security Council resolution after another to stop the Israeli murderous machinery; when we see U.S. Secretary of Defence Lloyd J Austin III in the news pledging his mighty military will protect Israel against attempts to stop its rampage; when the irredeemably corrupt New York City Mayor Eric Adams delivers nauseating "stand with Israel" speeches, something deep in the history of African American experience cries foul.

And when Congresswoman Cori Bush of Missouri avows: "Aipac [American Israel Public Affairs Committee], I'm coming to tear your kingdom down!" she invokes an entirely different legacy of solidarity with Palestinians in African American history, as Israel systematically unleashes its savageries against Palestinians and other Arab nations like Lebanon.

Towering figures like Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Angela Davis, Alice Walker, and Cornel West have been bold, precise, and hard-hitting when it comes to condemning the criminal atrocities of the U.S. and Israel in cahoots together.

Reenter Ta-Nehisi Coates

It was not too long ago when the heat on Ta-Nehisi Coates, a prominent African-American literary and critical voice, got so bad he ran out of the kitchen.

Back in 2017, he deleted his Twitter account with millions of followers and went into occultation following a scathing critique levelled against him by the unflinching moral conscience of Cornel West, a distinguished scholar and activist who called him "the neoliberal face of the Black freedom struggle."

Coates soon left his main outlet, The Atlantic, a major Zionist operation run by former Israeli prison guard Jeffrey Goldberg, that was grooming him as a feather in their Israeli hat. For years, he would oblige.

Coates published his 2008 hymn for Israel, " The Negro Sings of Zionism," which he followed with "The Case for Reparations" in 2014. The essay, which sparked criticism among Palestine advocates, made him a darling of American Zionists.

Coates presented Israel as the model for reparations and thought African Americans ought to do the same as the Israeli state did with Germans.

For a decade now, that bit of Zionist newspeak he embraced under the condition he now calls " default Zionism" has haunted his conscience. Rightly so: Today, when he appears for public interviews, he repeatedly says: "I am ashamed!"

He should be.

Had he not heard of Edward Said when he was entrapped in that "default Zionism"? Any answer he might give to that simple question would be even more incriminating.

The most damning assessment of Coates, however, was not by West, who said in 2017 that Coates "reaps the benefits of the neoliberal establishment that rewards silences on issues such as Wall Street greed or Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and people."

In his characteristically patient and precise prose, the eminent Indian public intellectual Pankaj Mishra published a major review of Coates' 2017 book on the Obama era, We Were Eight Years in Power, in the London Review of Books.

Mishra detailed and dissected Coates' deeply white-identified career, which banked on his Black identity to drive guilt-ridden white America to celebrate him—just as Barack and Michelle Obama had done. This was a fact that West had also intuited and laid bare to him.

Mishra picked up on Coates' own sense of wonder in himself, "Why do white people like what I write?" and analysed with surgical precision:

[Coates] also visibly struggles with the question, "Why do white people like what I write?'' This is a fraught issue for the very few writers from formerly colonized countries or historically disadvantaged minorities in the West who are embraced by "legacy" periodicals, and then tasked with representing their people—or country, religion, race, and even continent (as in The New York Times's praise for Salman Rushdie: "A continent finding its voice"). Relations between the anointed "representative" writer and those who are denied this privilege by white gatekeepers are notoriously prickly. Coates, a self-made writer, is particularly vulnerable to the charge that he is popular among white liberals since he assuages their guilt about racism.

This was published in February 2018, just a few months after West had, with the stroke of a few bold and brilliant paragraphs, forced Coates into early withdrawal from the public to lick his wounds.

It did him good and well.

His new book, The Message, is his deliverance from error, as it were, his version of al-Ghazali's classic al-Munkidh min al-Dalal/Deliverance from Darkness, published nearly 1,000 years ago.

Imagine that! A young African American writer publishes a book that reminds me, a Muslim, of the autobiographical masterpiece of a towering Muslim philosopher mystic. This should mean more to him than any Pulitzer or Booker.

But Coates' visit to Palestine for just 10 days is reminiscent of another even closer Muslim to his home and habitat when Malcolm X visited Gaza in September 1964.

On this occasion, he wrote: "The ever-scheming European imperialists wisely placed Israel where she could geographically divide the Arab world, infiltrate and sow the seed of dissension among African leaders, and also divide the Africans against the Asians."

Bearing witness to Palestinian suffering and Zionist thuggeries, Coates has a giant pair of shoes to fill if he continues on this path.

The long essay Coates wrote on his visit to Palestine, which is included in his book, marks his deliverance from Zionist prose.

For generations, liberal Zionists have infiltrated the ranks of American liberal imperialists with terror visited upon the world. West and Mishra saw through Coates clearly; now, so has he.

Deliverance from Zionism

Immediately after the publication of Coates' latest book, the pro-Israel hasbara machinery, of course, went berserk and unleashed its furies, the racist nature of which managed to surprise even Coates himself.

Other liberal Zionists like Ezra Klein of The New York Times tried to undermine his arguments by asking him why he did not consult with rabid Zionists in Israel when he was there, and of course, setting the usual propaganda trap, "What about Hamas?"

As defined and determined by well-endowed and ideologically committed outlets like the Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic, the U.S. media is a well-oiled propaganda machinery of hasbara-informed pro-Israel newspeak.

The gap between the liberating truth Coates now sees and speaks and the ugly propaganda Zionists continue to keep dominant in American political culture is now widening apace.

Previously, when others like Coates suddenly found a conscience, the mainstream press just turned a deaf ear and pretended it did not happen. Perhaps one recent example is New York Congressman Jamaal Bowman, whose changed position on Israel not only cost him his reelection campaign but has largely relegated him to obscurity.

Given his influence on the white liberal establishment and their understanding of race and diversity in this country, can Coates be marginalized like any other American who dares speak the truth about Israel, let alone at this particular moment in history?

The gap between the liberating truth Coates now sees and speaks and the ugly propaganda Zionists continue to keep dominant in American political culture is now widening apace.

More than half a century after the Civil Rights movement—when the world thought racism had been dealt with—Americans gave Donald Trump to the world right after Obama lent his Black identity to career opportunist liberal imperialism of the worst kind.

The stockpile of bombs the Israelis are dropping on Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, Yemenis, and others remains Obama's legacy in the Middle East.

As I write, Americans are almost evenly split on the upcoming presidential election, poised to vote for either a Mussolini wannabe rank charlatan fascist or a Genocide Joe replacement who, like a parrot or a broken record, can only repeat AIPAC talking points.

Between a genocidal administration with the blood of tens of thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese on its hands and a fascist wannabe, the future of the U.S. and all its global warmongering, particularly its Israeli garrison state, is now being determined.

The significance of what Coates has written weighs far less for Palestinians who have equally if not more eloquent voices to speak on their behalf.

But for Americans, Coates' corrective message may both inspire and signal a broader cultural shift in which this country may be liberated from the curse of Zionism.

In 1968, when I was twenty years old, I volunteered to serve with the Marines in Vietnam. I was trained to be a Navy Corpsman (medic) and attached to the Marines. I was only in Vietnam five weeks before being seriously wounded. I was with a company of 83 Marines when we were given orders to go to the top of a mountain, where we became completely surrounded by 1500 North Vietnamese Regulars. It is impossible for me to describe what it was like to be the target of 1500 machine guns firing all at once. Eighty percent of us were either killed or wounded in the first ten minutes of the battle. When the firing quieted down, I belly-crawled over to a Marine whose left arm was blown off and that’s when I was shot in the hip. My hip was blown off.

For most of the past fifty-plus years, I have been cared for by the VA Healthcare system. I’ve watched with admiration as the system has consistently improved - sometimes, remarkably - over those five decades. But now I watch with alarm as former President and current candidate for another term Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance and their allies at the Heritage Foundation threaten the existence of the kind of care veterans like me depend on.

Trump and Vance and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 accuse the VA of making veterans dependent on care they don’t really need. They attack the dedicated nurses, doctors and countless others who have cared for me as being bad apples and callous sadists, and they claim that our PTSD is nothing more than having a bad hair day. They want to privatize the system and make sure that future generations of veterans who have sacrificed so much for their country don’t get the kind of care that has literally saved my life.

Let me tell you more about my journey and about the care I have received. After being shot in the hip, I lay with an open wound in dense jungle for five days before help could reach me. After being rescued by helicopter, it took seven days at a field hospital for surgeons to stabilize me enough to be flown to a much larger and better equipped hospital in Japan. My whole right hip joint was destroyed, plus my hip was horribly infected with osteomyelitis, a recurrent life-threatening bacterial infection. The kind of care I received back in the early 70’s at the VA was too often hit and miss, so I stopped going. But I returned in the mid-1990’s to find that the quality of care had radically changed for the better.

The change was so obvious when I walked in the door. The attitude towards us by the staff was wonderful. The whole VA staff had learned a lot about how to manage the complex symptoms of PTSD. When I went back to the VA hospital for care I knew I needed help dealing with psychological and emotional issues, not just my physical illness and injury. I was angry at my country and thought I had every right to be angry, even the responsibility to be angry. VA healthcare has helped me find the options I needed to deal with my anger.

Pain management has been another major challenge for me and many other Vietnam veterans over the past five decades. If I hadn’t had constant care from the VA, I strongly believe I wouldn’t be here today.

Over the past five decades I have seen first-hand how VA doctors and nurses have evolved in their understanding of the complex issues that veterans are dealing with. I experienced horrible healthcare treatment back in the 1970s and 80s, but now I’m receiving what I consider the best care there is. I wouldn’t go anywhere else.

This is why I urge all veterans and non-veterans to pay close attention to the anti-VA messages that are being broadcast by folks whose main goal is to send veterans to private sector doctors and hospitals.