Who Were the Sea Peoples?

When Howard Dean's candidacy was sabotaged by the spread of the "Dean is crazy" meme, I began to recognize that although America ostensibly has two political parties, the goal of our elites is to make sure that each party runs a presidential candidate acceptable to them. Sure, the two parties are not identical, and there is plenty of room for disagreement so long as that disagreement is not on issues important to our elite class: 1) globalism and the gradual destruction of nation-states (so that trans-national corporations gain power); 2) continual low-level warfare around the world (so military contractors make more and more money); and 3) continued macroeconomic turbulence (so top investment banks become richer and richer). When a candidate who is not "on board" on these issues seems to be a threat, there are certain standard ways to deal with him or her. They involve spreading the memes that: 1) that candidate is a racist; 2) that candidate is cr...

Our foreign policy over the last couple of decades has wrecked the lives of millions and millions of people in the Middle East. It has reduced country after country to anarchy in the bad sense: starvation, lawlessness, civil war. And surprise : all of this chaos enriches American corporations that sell weapons and "security" to foreign governments. There are many important issues dividing the American electorate: SSM, gun control, abortion law, etc., etc. I don't wish to downplay the significance of the debates on these topics, except to note that every one of them, on a global scale, pales in significance to the moral necessity that we stop destroying the lives of millions and millions of people in the Middle East. And it is clear to me that Hillary Clinton will eagerly continue to pursue the policies that create this destruction: indeed, she was the prime architect of some of the past destruction. Donald Trump is not my ideal candidate for president: I would l...

My local in Brooklyn is about 99.9% Democrat in its voting. In fact, I was mentioning that my PhD is in politics, and my great friend who bartends there said, "But you never talk about politics!" Well, yes: politics really ought to be a minor part of our lives. The major part ought to be loving our family, taking care of our neighbors, doing our jobs, enjoying our hobbies and vocations... we ought to resort to politics only when those things break down. (That does not mean we can "do away" with politics: there will always be points where those things do break down, and then we need a healthy concept of the political to get us through those break downs.) In any case, tonight I heard a regular there say, "You know, when you look at the actual policies Trump is proposing, they seem pretty reasonable." Trump's marketing shift to sell himself to mainstream voters has barely begun, and already, someone at this Democratic stronghold is willing to publ...