The branding of Vladimir Putin as a war criminal by Joe Biden, who lobbied for the Iraq war and staunchly supported the 20 years of carnage in the Mi… - Chris Hedges

The United States, as the near unanimous vote to provide nearly $40 billion in aid to Ukraine illustrates, is trapped in the death spiral of unchecked militarism. No . No . No viable Covid relief program. No respite from 8.3 percent inflation. No infrastructure programs to repair decaying roads and bridges, which require $41.8 billion to fix the 43,586 structurally deficient bridges, on average 68 years old. No forgiveness of $1.7 trillion in . No addressing . No program to feed the . No rational gun control or curbing of the epidemic of nihilistic violence and . No help for the . No of $15 an hour to counter 44 years of wage stagnation. No respite from gas prices that are projected to hit $6 a gallon.

We have to acknowledge that the empire is tottering towards its collapse... Empire is the expression of white supremacy beyond our borders... to go into the Middle East... Vietnam, Latin America, the Philippines... & steal natural resources... exploit cheap labor... White supremacy hurts white folks.... The police in Buffalo intentionally knocking down that older white man, who lay there bleeding from the head while the police walked over him... was such a profound metaphor for how racism hurts white people... What empires traditionally do at the end is they engage in what historians call "micro-militarism".... At the end stage, the elites need the tools that the empire perfected on people of color abroad... the drones and militarized police and heavy weapons such as armored personnel carriers being used.... against the country's own citizens.

Liberalism, which Luxemburg called by its more appropriate name—“opportunism”—is an integral component of capitalism. When the citizens grow restive, it will soften and decry capitalism’s excesses. But capitalism, Luxemburg argued, is an enemy that can never be appeased. Liberal reforms are used to stymie resistance and then later, when things grow quiet, are revoked on the inevitable road to capitalist slavery. The last century of labor struggles in the United States provides a case study for proof of Luxemburg’s observation.<p>The political, cultural and judicial system in a capitalist state is centered around the protection of property rights. And, as Adam Smith pointed out, when civil government “is instituted for the security of property, [it] is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.” The capitalist system is gamed from the start. And this makes Luxemburg extremely relevant as corporate capital, now freed from all constraints, reconfigures our global economy, including the United States’, into a ruthless form of neofeudalism.