The US government is set to default on it’s debt as soon as June 1 should a compromise in Congress to raise the debt ceiling fail to come to fruition. As of this writing, House Speaker McCarthy and President Biden, among other lawmakers, have failed to come to a deal and negotiations are on pause. Essentially, the Democrats want to raise the debt ceiling without any cuts in spending to make up for it, while the Republicans want a cut in federal spending. As I listen to these debates I cannot help but feel a sinking pit of disgust in my stomach. Congress has the audacity to have these discussions and try to fear monger the American public, while at the same time call for continued and continued increases in the defense budget and military spending. Nowhere in these discussions have I heard proposed cuts in this kind of spending while the military budget exceeds $800 billion. Keep in mind that it would cost approximately $20 billion to completely eradicate homelessness in the United States. This is a clear indication of where our priorities are in this country. Instead of setting aside money to help combat homelessness, instead of setting aside money to help keep us from defaulting on our debt, instead of allocating a penny to other, more worthwhile areas, we refuse to take a dime away from the military industrial complex. It is shameful and we as a nation should be embarrassed. Gutting the military could help solve so many issues in this country.

Title 42 was a Trump-era immigration policy enacted in March 2020 at the onset of the covid pandemic. It essentially enacted a near total ban on all migrants crossing the border from Mexico into the United States under the guise of halting the spread of the disease. With the new authority to deny applications for asylum, border patrol agents turned away millions of migrants and sent them back to Mexico. Since taking office Biden has kept this policy in place. However, with his administration’s recent decision to end the covid-19 national emergency, Title 42 ended as well. Since then, the Biden administration had put into place new immigration polices that are just as cruel and ineffective as his predecessor’s. Now asylum seekers who first traveled into Mexico from another country will be denied on the basis that the United States was not their first point of contact and they did not apply for asylum in another country first. And even among those who are still granted asylum, their application can get stuck in a bureaucratic cesspool for years. There is also a continuing prejudice against those who are traveling alone. What I find interesting is how similar Biden’s immigration policies are to Trump’s. For all of his and Harris’ posturing about how different they are than Trump, their immigration policies are just as cruel, just as racist and just as ignorant as his. Considering the track record of both administrations, a long history of broken immigration policies in this country and the likelihood of a 2024 rematch, I don’t predict these policies becoming any more humane in the near future. I hope that I am wrong.

The recent announcement of RFK’s 2024 presidential campaign has gotten me thinking about the idea of dynasties in American politics. Dynasty names such as the Kennedys, Clintons and Bushs have propelled individuals with no real merit through our political system on nepotism alone. This is not necessarily a commentary on RFK as a candidate or even an individual as I admittedly don’t know much about him, but I find it interesting that due to name recognition alone he has been able to blow past Marianne Williamson in the polls with basically zero effort. As of this writing, according to the recent poll from Emerson College RFK holds 21% compared to president Biden’s 71%, with Williamson behind at 8%. The point is not that RFK is behind Biden by a seemingly insurmountable 49%, but that he has nearly tripled the level of support for Williamson, someone with no name recognition but who has launched a more traditional, grassroots campaign. It seems that RFK’s family legacy has enable him to bypass entirely the money primary. The money primary is a term that refers to the unofficial first real hurdle of launching a presidential campaign. It essentially means before anybody can be considered a “real” candidate they have to amass a certain amount of funds and capital. This in turn essentially disqualifies anyone who isn’t able to raise this money, or fund it themselves if they are independently wealthy, which is another conversation that can be had entirely. In RFK’s case, that K has enabled his campaign to shape up to at the very least be a thorn in the side for the Biden team. I don’t believe he will win, but without his name he most likely wouldn’t be polling in the double digits like he consistently has been. America needs no more dynasty politicians.

I have long believed that the United States’ lack of a universal healthcare program is highly immoral and unethical. Truly, this is a country where the profits of drug companies and insurance companies matter more than the health and well being of the citizenry. It is a common criticism against the United States that we are the only developed nation on earth without a universal healthcare program. What is and is not considered a developed country is fluid, but the point remains true nonetheless. Apparently, there is something most other developed nations around the world have figured out that we as a nation have not. I would say that is it simply a refusal to believe that healthcare is a fundamental human right and not something for companies to exploit to make a profit off of. And yet it is barely discussed in our political discourse. Both Republicans and Democrats are completely beholden to corporate interests and only a handful, such as Sanders and Williamson, have the courage to want to do something about it. One would think that our recent struggles with the Coronavirus pandemic would finally illuminate the need for an upheaval of our healthcare system, but apparently not. According to Procon.org the US would have saved over $105 billion in hospitalization costs during the pandemic had we already had a single payer system in place. According to the same website, a single payer system has the potential to save in excess of 68,000 lives and 1.73 million life-years compared to the privatized corporate greed we have now. The overall cost of a single payer system is debated, but it’s worth keeping in mind that we already have a from of universal healthcare with Medicare and Medicaid. This creates the benefit of not having to create a new system from scratch. All we have to do is expand it. And whatever the cost is, I refuse to accept it as politically unfeasible when we can afford to send $800 billion to the military.

As the unnecessarily long 2024 election season continues to pick up steam, I’d like to take a moment to ponder some potential hypotheticals as to how the election will unfold. As of this writing, in April 2023, it seems the most likely scenario will be a rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Biden himself has yet to officially declare his candidacy and Trump is likely to face a significant challenge from his own party from Ron DeSantis. A handful of other Republicans and Democrats have launched their own campaigns, with more guaranteed to follow, but I don’t see any of those campaigns really bearing any fruit. DeSantis is the only Republican who can put up a realistic fight against Trump. As for the Democrats, Biden as of now has two challengers, RFK Jr. and Marianne Williamson. And while their combined support coupled with Biden’s low approval numbers does indicate a problem for Biden, at the end of the day I have a hard time imagining the candidate being someone other than him. Harris would get crushed in a general election and there really is no other realistic alternative to Biden, sad as that may be. Personally, I’m an avid supporter of both Sanders and Warren, but I don’t see either of them challenging Biden again. I have respect for Williamson but I also don’t think she has a chance against Biden. And with Trump’s only real competition slipping himself in the polls I don’t see how the Republicans wind up with a nominee other than Trump. As I sit here and reflect on this I feel this unshakable sense of sorrow. The last thing this country needs right now is a rematch from 2020. I believe that we as a nation deserve so much better than both Trump and Biden and I think it is a sad reality that the 2024 election will likely coalesce into another bout between them. We need to move on from these two, from the partisan vitriol that divides us. America deserves no less. I pray that in 2028 we will see candidates with the courage to bring about real change.

One of the most common platitudes you hear these days is the idea of defending democracy. The implication of course being that there are bad actors who threaten our democratic liberties and state power by default always acts in a way to deter these bad actors and protect democracy. Not only is this a very self serving image of those in power, but it is simply a fairy tale. We see this narrative spun on a wider scale with the ongoing war in Ukraine. The war itself is something that could be written about and discussed endlessly, but that is not the purpose of this post. Rather I’d like to focus in on the way the media portrays the actions of the US in the war. According to the corporate media, who I might add are fulfilling their role of reinforcing established power brilliantly, the United States is supporting Ukraine, both financially and militarily, because we care so deeply about democratic values and Ukraine is on the side of democracy. Whereas, conversely, Russia is not and seeks to impede on those liberties. It’s your classic old west trope of good vs evil that is so deeply ingrained in the psyche of the American mind. And if it were true it’d be awfully convenient for the United States. But it isn’t true. The US is not concerned with defending democracy on the world stage. It does not care about the plight of the people of Ukraine or Taiwan. What the US does care about is the defeat of major adversaries such as Russia and China. The narrative of “defending democracy” is spun as an excuse to further isolate Russia into a deeper and deeper corner. And instead of seeking a peaceful resolution to this conflict, we funnel billions of dollars and an endless cache of weapons into Ukraine for the sake of “defending democracy”, all at the continued detriment and suffering of the people of Ukraine.

As of this writing, there are approximately 2,640 billionaires in the world. Roughly 614 of these billionaires are in the United States. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), over a quarter of the wealth in the US is held by households with a network in excess of $30 million. This accounts for 0.25% of the population, or 1 in 400 households. The ITEP also estimates that if these same households were taxed 2% annually it would generate an additional $415 billion per year. At the same time, as of 2021, 11.6% of the population, or 37.9 million people, lived below the poverty line. This is a systemic injustice. It’s legal theft that Congress, the Supreme Court and the lobbying industry have allowed to fester and grow for decades. From an elementary moral perspective, it is an injustice to allow even a single citizen to go without adequate food, shelter and/or medical care while so few have so much. Even from a legal perspective, according to the UN charter on human rights, it is a blatant injustice. Yet it is an issue that mostly goes undiscussed and unaddressed. It’s a level of greed and opulence that’s difficult to wrap your head around in one of the most developed nations on earth. I believe that wealth inequality in the US is the root of most of our issues and if we had elected officials and a citizenry that were brave enough to actually address it, we could see positive change in this country unlike any we have seen before.

In the United States it’s a commonly held belief that we have two major political parties. I would argue that we have a one-party system. You hear this notion of a two-party system repeated in the political zeitgeist ad nauseam in a less than subtle attempt to further alienate and divide the American people. Yet no matter who is ultimately in power, Democrat or Republican, we rarely see fundamental change. Because at the end of the day, despite any minute differences they may have, both parties are at their core pro big business and pro big military. Regardless of who is in charge the wealth gap remains astronomical and those with power retain it. Noam Chomsky refers to Democrats and Republicans as merely two factions of the same Business Party and I believe that’s as accurate of a description as you’re going to get. Yet the partisanship continues to pit Americans against one another, keeping them at each other’s throats, divided, instead of uniting together for a common purpose and to address real issues in this country. I believe the notion of a two-party system is a falsehood and if we want to have an actual democracy this needs to be addressed. The American middle class, regardless of party affiliation, has much more in common with each other than they do with billionaires and corporate elite, who the government has a symbiotic relationship with. This common purpose and common struggle should be embraced for the sake of positive and genuine change, rather than needless vitriol that only ultimately serves the interests of those in power. Because a unified American populace would present a crisis of democracy where collective organization could invoke fundamental change and in order to avoid that, we need to be sold this illusion of a two-party system.

If you google “How many people died in the Iraq war?” you’ll get countless sources with answers that vary greatly. This is because the exact human cost as a result of the war in Iraq is not fully known and may never will be. What we do know is that thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands more of Iraqi civilians were killed during this senseless conflict that ended in a worse place than it began. Brown University estimates the civilian cost to be in the range of 300,000. If you include Afghanistan, Business Insider estimates the human cost to be in the half a million range. None of this is to include the millions of lives in Iraq that were impacted in countless ways and the untold number of families who were ripped apart back here at home. Now, I don’t intend this blog to revolve solely around Iraq, but as I alluded to in my first post, it is a core inspiration for why I wanted to start this blog in the first place. I was born in the mid 90s and grew up in the 2000s. I remember, vividly, growing up in this culture of perpetual war. And even though I was only six at the time, I have the vaguest memories of 9/11. As I reflect on these events today I’m left with an overwhelming sense of sorrow. As I learn more and more about the real history I gain a deeper and deeper sense of commitment to a set of elementary moral principles. Principles that, if practiced by Americans at the time, would have spared us and the world a pointless war. We don’t deserve the luxury of admitting a mistake in hindsight and brushing the whole war off so flippantly. Rather, we need to come to terms with the crimes we as a nation committed in the Middle East and learn to be more critical of our government and military so this cycle ceases to continue. So I ask now, two decades later, what was it all for?

I begin this journey on March 19th, 2023, the twentieth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. There is a wide breadth of discussions to be had on that topic alone, but that is not the purpose of this post. Rather, I chose this date because I believe it is symbolic of the reason I decided to create my own blog. To put it simply, I want to create a space of genuine open discussion, a place where everyone is welcome to freely express and discuss any idea, regardless of how controversial, abstract or uncomfortable. As an American, it has become painfully obvious that in modern day America the consent of the masses is manufactured to either be completely beholden to state power or apathetic and disinterested. As the most powerful nation in the history of mankind, our vision of our country and the world around us is carefully curated in such as way that serves the interests of the elites and those in power. The relationship between our government and big business is one that is, in my view, wholly undemocratic. I believe that the “two party system” is a myth and that we actually have, in the words of Noam Chomsky, a singular business party. All of this is at the detriment of not only us, the American people, but the rest of the world. As Americans, it is our duty to be vigilant, educate ourselves and speak truth to power. For this reason, it is my firm belief that freedom of expression, speech and thought are among the most important core principles of a healthy democracy. That is what this blog is for. This is a space intended to be for anyone who feels left out and let down by the political process in this country, a space to have open dialogue and most importantly, a place to dissent. If this was done more two decades ago, perhaps we could have avoided entering into a pointless war that resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent lives and shred every pretense of international law. Lastly, I choose to criticize not from a place of hatred or anger, but from a sense of responsibility and duty as a citizen. Failure to do so gives us and the world situations like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. To this end, I welcome any and all points of view and I thank you for joining me on this journey.