Originally published, Jan 21, 2019

Martin Luther King was not just a triumphant fighter against the moral obscenity of Jim Crow. He also was willing to spend much of his political capital decrying the mindless, futile carnage of Viet Nam — a position for which a formerly supportive mainstream media excoriated him. In honor of MLK Day, I would like to offer this modest proposal:

While it may be foolish to look to our political system for solutions to our problems, it is arguable that who is president at any given time matters. I used to be less certain about this. I had come to the view that any president was basically a spokes-model for the 1%, and hence the military industrial complex, Wall Street, the establishment, the oligarchy, etc.

It's taken hundreds of thousands of innocent lives and trillions of dollars, but it appears that most people think that war isn't very fun anymore.

Afghan Vice President and war criminal Abdul Rashid Dostum narrowly survived the second assassination attempt in less than a year. Meanwhile, the Taliban overran another district. That was the good news.

In the midst of the daily cray-cray (srsly), I sometimes like to pause and look on the bright side. We are having national conversations about many important issues: race and discrimination, police violence and militarized policing, LGBTQ rights, health care for all, free education, wealth and income inequality, dysfunctional government, human rights, immigration, socialism vs.

Remember how Trump was supposed to be The Most Dangerous President Evah? And how Trump was going to start wars all over the globe?
Well, this happened today.

It was touch-and-go for a while there, but the pullout is going to happen.

Now that our idiot 'president' is threatening to end our involvement in the war in Syria (that was never authorized by congress) and now Afghanistan too, the establishment is losing its shit.