TRUMP'S PLAYING TOY SOLDIER AGAIN ... AND THE REST OF THE WORLD IS THE WORSE FOR IT

This quote from The Hill pretty much sums up what's wrong with Donald Trump's decision to pull troops out of Syria after speaking with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ...

The White House announced Sunday night that U.S. troops would leave northern Syria and that Turkey would launch an invasion in the region. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan considers the Kurdish fighters "terrorists," as a result of a longstanding separatist movement among Kurds in Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey, but the U.S. considered the Kurdish forces in northern Syria to be their strongest allies in the fight against the Islamic State [my italics], which is why Trump has received bipartisan criticism for leaving them vulnerable to Turkish forces.

And this quote/Tweet pretty much sums up what's wrong with Donald Trump, and why much of the world views him as an unhinged lunatic ...

How much of Trump's reckless stupidity can the world take before something really bad happens?

For those of you who aren't experts in the region, or are simply interested in knowing more, read Foreign Policy's "Despite Syria 'Safe Zone,' Kurdish Leader Fears Threat from Turkey" and "Defying Pentagon, Trump Endorses Turkish Operations in Syria." You can also click "here" for the Kurds' immediate response to Trump's decision.

Also, in case you're wondering, even Trump's lap dog, Senator Lindsey Graham is upset with Trump on this, commenting "this is a disaster in the making" (among other things, it will force the Kurds to align with Assad and Iran), adding "ISIS is not defeated. This is the biggest lie being told by this administration."

Here's what everyone needs to know. Trump has no idea what he's doing. The fact that he's playing toy soldier in sensitive regions that have been explosive points in the past, makes our world less safe.

Interestingly, Putin and Russia's foreign policy interests are big winners here.

Big surprise there, right?

- Mark

THIS MIGHT TAKE A SECOND (or two) ...

- Mark

AGREED ... HE'S A NATIONAL EMBARRASSMENT

Click here to read the piece.

- Mark

DRIP, DRIP, DRIP ...

Click here for the story.

- Mark

THE CONSERVATIVE'S THELMA & LOUISE

- Mark

RUDY GIULIANI'S NEW PLATFORM

Rudy Giuliani has a new gig in New York ... 😉

- Mark

WHY GROWING INEQUALITY IN AMERICA IS ALL WRONG FOR AMERICA

Breaking down figures provided by the Federal Reserve, the People's Policy Project found that the top 1 percent of Americans gained $21 trillion in wealth since 1989 while the bottom 50 percent lost $900 billion. This means that wealth inequality in America is worse today than it was in the 1920s, right before the market collapsed and created the conditions for the Great Depression.  

If we're to believe in the logic of the market, the wealth gains of the top 1 percent over the past 30 years is due to the fact that they're smarter, stronger, harder working and better looking than the rest of us. 

But we know better. Since the 1980s the U.S. government has deliberately created the conditions for wealth to accumulate at the top, while systematically working to drain more of it from those at the lower end of the economic scale. 

How does this happen? Very simple. It's deliberate and, as I pointed out in an earlier post, it's happened before. History helps us see how it's happened, and how we're cutting our own throats in the process.

Arnold Toynbee, author of the epic A Study of History, believed that there was nothing in the biology, geography, or mysticism of a civilization that determined their destinies. In his view, theories of master races, an abundance of natural resources, or Manifest Destiny-like visions don't determine history. What determines a society's ability to adapt, survive, and prosper as a civilization is the way it responds to collective challenges.

Toynbee believed how great civilizations - or at least the 21 or so civilizations that he located - responded to challenges depended on how "creative minorities" acted when confronted with protracted problems.

It could be spiritual, as was the case when the Catholic Church responded to the Dark Ages by organizing Germanic tribes and kingdoms into a single religious (and Catholic) community. This helped make the Dark Ages less dark, and set the stage for the emergence of feudalism and, eventually, the rise of our modern nation-state system by 1648.

Historian Arnold J. Toynbee

Responding to challenges could also be physical, as when the Sumerians organized society to drain and reconstitute the swamps of present day Iraq, in the process building large scale irrigation systems that allowed the agriculture revolution in the region to take off. The ability of the United States to conquer the vast expanse of the continent with canals, the railroads, and the Army Corps of Engineers is evidence of responding to the collective challenge of geography too.

When civilizations stop responding to big challenges creatively they begin to spin into gradual collapse, with nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority overshadowing and finally replacing the ingenuity of creative minorities. 

It's at this time that civilizations begin to swirl the drain of history.

According to Toynbee, apart from nationalism, militarism, and tyranny, one of the features of a civilization in decline was growing wealth inequality - or what Toynbee might have called the "schism" between the never "satiated" elites and the unfortunate "hungry" pawns at the bottom.

Once incomes and wealth became more concentrated great civilizations were on the path of decay. This path was paved by the reluctance of elites to participate in the maintenance of society and, especially, to the maintenance of those at the bottom rungs of society. This is what makes growing inequality today so troublesome.

Compared to history's financial gluttons - when there were fewer rules, and slavery was legal - the income (and wealth) gaps we're experiencing today tell us that history is whispering in our ear. And it's not good.

Our modern "schism" works like this. American conservatives today see a world where those with wealth earned it on their own. Liberals like Hedrick Smith - author of Who Stole the American Dream? - and I see wealth created by corporate lobbyists and obsequious members of Congress, who douse their rich patrons in favorable legislation, undeserved bailouts, unrelenting attacks on labor, and wealth friendly tax cuts that effectively guarantee financial success and class dominance - all at the expense of the American middle class.

Put another way, growing inequality in America - and $21 trillion in new wealth for the top 1 percent - is a deliberate process that has more to do with political connections than hard work. Arnold Toynbee would recognize it. We should recognize it, and understand what it means for our future. But we don't. 

We're approaching our future as if history never happened. 

Worse, we're acting like historical illiterates.

- Mark

"MEDIEVAL DON" ACTUALLY SUGGESTED WE CREATE A BORDER MOAT ... COMPLETE WITH ALLIGATORS AND SNAKES

Proving that his thinking is closer to medieval lunacy than anything associated with the restrained "sanity" of the modern world, Donald Trump's border proposals included creating a border "moat" filled with alligators and snakes. If that didn't work, he also threw out the idea of allowing border patrol agents to shoot migrants in the legs, to slow them down.

CNN's Don Lemon captures the thinking in the segment linked below.

If you want to read more about Medieval Don's border lunacy, click here and here.

- Mark

MY GOD, IT'S NEVER ENDING ...

OK, get ready for one of these ...

OK, now, from our Idiot-in-Chief.

Yeah, that's Donald Trump congratulating communist China for their communist revolution. He might as well have congratulated the Chinese for their Great Leap Forward (which was neither) and their Cultural Revolution (hardly cultured) while he's at it.

What a moron. 

- Mark

UPDATE: For the record, "China Was Born in Chains" ...

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OK, THIS IS FUNNY ...

As a rule, I don't promote products or accept advertising on my blog. But since this made me laugh, if you want one of these shirts, click here.

- Mark